Ways of the World a Global History with S

chapter twenty- two The End of Empire The Global South on the Global Stage 1914–present

Toward Freedom: Struggles for “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the Independence African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have The End of Empire in World History Explaining African and Asian fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a Independence democratic and free society in which all persons live together in har- Comparing Freedom Struggles mony and with equal opportunity. It is an ideal which I hope to live The Case of India: Ending British Rule for and to achieve. But, if need be, it is an ideal for which I am pre- The Case of South Africa: Ending 1 Apartheid pared to die.” Experiments with Freedom Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s nationalist leader, frst uttered Experiments in Political Order: Party, these words in 1964 at his trial for treason, sabotage, and conspiracy Army, and the Fate of Democracy to overthrow the apartheid government of his country. Convicted of Experiments in Economic Development: Changing Priorities, Varying Outcomes those charges, he spent the next twenty-seven years in prison, some- Experiments with Culture: The Role of times working at hard labor in a stone quarry. Often the foor was Islam in Turkey and Iran his bed, and a bucket was his toilet. For many years, he was allowed Reﬂections: History in the Middle of one visitor a year for thirty minutes and permitted to write and re- the Stream Portrait: Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Muslim ceive one letter every six months. When he was fnally released from Paciﬁst prison in 1990 under growing domestic and international pressure, Considering the Evidence he concluded his frst speech as a free person with the words origi- Documents: Contending for Islam nally spoken at his trial. Four years later, in 1994, South Afr ica held Visual Sources: Representing Independence its frst election in which blacks and whites alike were able to vote. The outcome of that election made Mandela the country’s frst black African president, and it linked South Africa to dozens of other countries all across Africa and Asia that had thrown of European rule or the control of white settlers during the second half of the twentieth century.

variously called the struggle for independence or decolonization, that process carried an immense signifcance for the history

Independence and Development: In the eyes of most Asians and Africans, the struggle for national independence from European colonial rule was but a prelude to and prerequisite for the even greater struggle for modern development, symbolized here by some students in a computer lab of a small technical college. (© Anna Kari/In Pictures/Corbis) 1087 1088 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

of the twentieth century. It marked a dramatic change in the world’s political archi- tecture, as nation-states triumphed over the empires that had structured much of the world’s political life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It mobilized millions of people, thrusting them into political activity and sometimes into violence and warfare. Decolonization signaled the declining legitimacy of both empire and race as a credible basis for political or social life. It promised not only national freedom but also personal dignity, abundance, and opportunity. What followed in the decades after independence was equally signifcant. Politi- cal, economic, and cultural experiments proliferated across these newly independent nations, which faced enormous challenges: the legacies of empire; their own deep divisions of language, ethnicity, religion, and class; their rapidly growing numbers; the competing demands of the capitalist West and the communist East; the difcult tasks of simultaneously building modern economies, stable politics, SEEKING THE MAIN POINT and coherent nations; and all of this in a world still shaped by the powerful economies and armies of the wealthy, already indus- In what ways did the experience of the “global trialized nations. The emergence of these new nations onto the south” during the past century register on the larger stage of world history? world stage as independent and assertive actors has been a distin- guishing feature of world history in this most recent century.

Toward Freedom: Struggles for Independence In 1900, European colonial empires in Africa and Asia appeared as permanent features of the world’s political landscape. Well before the end of the twentieth century, they were gone. The frst major breakthroughs occurred in Asia and the Middle East in the late 1940s, when the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel achieved independence. The period from the mid-1950s through the mid- 1970s was the age of African independence as colony after colony, more than ffty in total, emerged into what was then seen as the bright light of freedom.

The End of Empire in World History ■ Comparison At one level, this vast process was but the latest case of imperial dissolution, a fate that What was distinctive had overtaken earlier empires, including those of the Assyrians, Romans, Arabs, and about the end of Europe’s Mongols. But never before had the end of empire been so associated with the mobili- African and Asian empires zation of the masses around a nationalist ideology; nor had these earlier cases generated compared to other cases of imperial disintegration? a plethora of nation-states, each claiming an equal place in a world of nation-states. More comparable perhaps was that frst decolonization, in which the European colonies in the Americas threw of British, French, Spanish, or Portuguese rule during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (see Chapter 16). Like their earlier coun- terparts, the new nations of the twentieth century claimed an international status equivalent to that of their former rulers. In the Americas, however, many of the colo- nized people were themselves of European origin, sharing much of their culture with their colonial rulers. In that respect, the African and Asian struggles of the twentieth century were very diferent, for they not only asserted political independence but also chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1089

A Map of Time

1915 Gandhi returns to India from South Africa 1923–1938 Turkey’s secular modernization initiated under Kemal Ataturk 1928 Muslim Brotherhood established in Egypt 1947 Independence of India/Pakistan 1948 Establishment of state of Israel; apartheid formally established in South Africa 1949 Independence of Indonesia; communist victory in China 1955 Bandung Conference of nonaligned nations 1957–1975 Independence of African countries 1959 Cuban revolution 1960–1970s Wave of military coups in Africa and Latin America 1967 Six-day Arab/Israeli war 1973 OPEC oil embargo 1979 Revolution in Iran 1980s–1990s Growth of democratic movements and governments in Africa and Latin America 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa; genocide in Rwanda 2011 Arab Spring in the Middle East

afrmed the vitality of their cultures, which had been submerged and denigrated during the colonial era. The twentieth century witnessed the demise of many empires. The Austrian and Ottoman empires collapsed following World War I, giving rise to a number of new states in Europe and the Middle East. The Russian Empire also unraveled, although it was soon reassembled under the auspices of the Soviet Union. World War II ended the German and Japanese empires. African and Asian movements for independence shared with these other end-of-empire stories the ideal of national self-determination. This novel idea — that humankind was naturally divided into distinct peoples or nations, each of which deserved an independent state of its own — was loudly proclaimed by the winning side of both world wars. It gained an Afro-Asian following in the twentieth century and rendered empire illegitimate in the eyes of growing numbers of people. Empires without territory, such as the powerful infuence that the United States exercised in Latin America, likewise came under attack from highly nationalist governments. An intrusive U.S. presence was certainly one factor stimulating the Mexi- can Revolution, which began in 1910. One of the outcomes of that upheaval was 1090 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

ITALY SOVIET NORTH PORTUGAL SPAIN UNION KOREA TURKEY 1948 MALTA 1964 SOUTH CYPRUS 1960 SYRIA CHINA KOREA From G.B. 1944 MOROCCO TUNISIA LEBANON 1944 IRAQ AFGHANISTAN 1948 JAPAN 1957 1932 IRAN 1956 ISRAEL 1948 JORDAN 1946 ALGERIA PAKISTAN WESTERN 1962 LIBYA KUWAIT 1961 SAHARA 1951 EGYPT 1947 (Morocco) 1975 1922 BAHRAIN 1971 From Spain QATAR 1971 INDIA UNITED ARAB 1947 MYANMAR PACIFIC MAURITANIA EMIRATES 1971 (BURMA) LAOS NORTH VIETNAM 1960 MALI NIGER 1949 1954 OCEAN 1960 Unified 1975 SENEGAL GAMBIA 1960 CHAD YEMEN P.D.R. OF YEMEN 1967 PAKISTAN 1947 1960 SUDAN 1965 BURKINA BENIN 1960 BANGLADESH 1973 CAMBODIA SOUTH VIETNAM 1956 DJIBOUTI 1977 1954 GUINEA FASO 1960 1954 PHILIPPINES GUINEA- 1960 1958 IVORY NIGERIA 1946 BISSAU 1960 CENTRAL ETHIOPIA 1974 COAST AFR. REP. 1941 BRUNEI 1984 1960 CAMEROON 1960 SIERRA UGANDA SRI LANKA From Great Britain PAPUA TOGO 1960 SOMALIA MALAYSIA 1963 LEONE GHANA DEMOCRATIC 1962 1960 INDIAN (CEYLON) NEW GUINEA 1961 1960 REP. OF CONGO KENYA 1948 1975 LIBERIA1957 GABON SINGAPORE 1965 EQUATORIAL 1960 1960 1963 OCEAN 1820s GUINEA BURUNDI 1962 1968 From Spain RWANDA 1962 TANZANIA INDONESIA 1949 1964 REPUBLIC OF CONGO 1960 Year of independence 1960 ANGOLA MALAWI EAST TIMOR 1999 1975 ZAMBIA Belgium From Indonesia 1964 1964 ATLANTIC ZIMBABWE MADAGASCAR France OCEAN NAMIBIA 1985 1980 1960 Great Britain From South Africa BOTSWANA MOZAMBIQUE MAURITIUS 1966 1974 1968 From Great Britain Italy SOUTH SWAZILAND 1968 Netherlands AFRICA (Republic 1961; LESOTHO 1966 Portugal Black majority rule, 1994) United States 0 1,000 2,000 miles Other 0 1,000 2,000 kilometers

Map 22.1 The End of the nationalization in 1937 of Mexico’s oil industry, much of which was owned by Empire in Africa and Asia American and British investors. Similar actions accompanied Cuba’s revolution of In the second half of the twentieth century, under 1959–1960 and also occurred in other places throughout Latin America and elsewhere. pressure from nationalist National self-determination and freedom from Soviet control likewise lay behind the movements, Europe’s Asian eastern European revolutions of 1989 as well. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and African empires dis- itself in 1991 brought to an inglorious end the last of the major territorial empires solved into dozens of new independent states. of the twentieth century and the birth of ffteen new national states. Although the winning of political independence for Europe’s African and Asian colonies was perhaps the most spectacular challenge to empire in the twentieth century, that process was part of a larger pattern in modern world history (see Map 22.1).

Explaining African and Asian Independence As the twentieth century closed, the end of European empires seemed an almost inevitable phenomenon, for colonial rule had lost any credibility as a form of political order. What could be more natural than for people to seek to rule themselves? Yet at the beginning of the century, few observers were predicting the collapse of these empires, and the idea that “the only legitimate government is national self-government” was not nearly so widespread as it subsequently became. This situation has presented historians with a problem of explanation — how to account for the fall of European colonial empires and the emergence of dozens of new nation-states. One approach to explaining the end of colonial empires focuses attention on fundamental contradictions in the entire colonial enterprise. The rhetoric of Christianity, chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1091

Enlightenment thought, and material progress sat awkwardly with the realities of colonial racism, exploitation, and poverty. The increasingly democratic values of Euro- pean states ran counter to the essential dictatorship of colonial rule. The ideal of national self-determination was profoundly at odds with the possession of colonies that were denied any opportunity to express their own national character. The enormously powerful force of nationalism, having earlier driven the process of European empire building, now played a major role in its disintegration. Colonial rule, in this argument, dug its own grave. But why did this “fatal faw” of European colonial rule lead to independence in ■ Change the post–World War II decades rather than earlier or later? In explaining the timing of What international cir- the end of empire, historians frequently use the notion of “conjuncture,” the coming cumstances and social changes contributed together of several separate developments at a particular time. At the international to the end of colonial level, the world wars had weakened Europe, while discrediting any sense of European empires? moral superiority. Both the United States and the Soviet Union, the new global superpowers, generally opposed the older European colonial empires, even as they created empire-like international relationships of their own. Meanwhile, the United Nations provided a prestigious platform from which to conduct anticolonial agitation. All of this contributed to the global illegitimacy of empire, a novel and stunning transformation of social values that was enormously encouraging to Africans and Asians seeking political independence. At the same time, social and economic circumstances within the colonies themselves generated the human raw material for anticolonial movements. By the early twentieth century in Asia and the mid-twentieth century in Africa, a second or third generation of Western-educated elites, largely male, had arisen throughout the colonial world. These young men were thoroughly familiar with European culture; they were deeply aware of the gap between its values and its practices; they no longer viewed colonial rule as a vehicle for their peoples’ progress as their fathers had; and they increasingly insisted on immediate independence. Moreover, growing numbers of ordinary people — women and men alike — were receptive to this message. Veter- ans of the world wars; young people with some education but no jobs commensurate with their expectations; a small class of urban workers who were increasingly aware of their exploitation; small-scale female traders resentful of European privileges; rural dwellers who had lost land or sufered from forced labor; impoverished and insecure newcomers to the cities — all of these groups had reason to believe that independence held great promise. Such pressures increasingly placed colonial rulers on the defensive. As the twentieth century wore on, these colonial rulers began to plan — tentatively at frst — for a new political relationship with their Asian and African subjects. The colonies had been integrated into a global economic network and local elites were largely committed to maintaining those links. In these circumstances, Europeans could imagine retaining proftable economic interests in Asia and Africa without the expense and trouble of formal colonial governments. Deliberate planning for decolonization included gradual political reforms; investments in railroads, ports, and telegraph lines; the holding of 1092 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

elections; and the writing of constitutions. To some observers, it seemed as if independence was granted by colonial rulers rather than gained or seized by nationalist movements. ■ Description But these reforms, and independence itself, occurred only under considerable pres- What obstacles con- sure from mounting nationalist movements. Creating such movements was no easy fronted the leaders task. Leaders, drawn everywhere from the ranks of the educated few and almost al- of movements for ways male, organized political parties, recruited members, plotted strategy, developed independence? an ideology, and negotiated with one another and with the colonial state. The most prominent among them became the “fathers” of their new countries as independence dawned — Gandhi and Nehru in India, Sukarno in Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh in Viet- nam, Nkrumah in Ghana, and Mandela in South Africa. In places where colonial rule was particularly intransigent — settler-dominated colonies and Portuguese territories, for example — leaders also directed military operations and administered liberated areas. While such movements drew on memories of earlier, more localized forms of resistance, nationalist leaders did not seek to restore a vanished past. Rather they looked forward to joining the world of independent nation-states, to membership in the United Nations, and to the wealth and power that modern technology promised. A further common task of the nationalist leadership was to recruit a mass following, and to varying degrees, they did. Millions of ordinary men and women joined Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns in India; tens of thousands of freedom fghters waged guerrilla warfare in Algeria, Kenya, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe; in West Af- rica workers went on strike and market women joined political parties, as did students, farmers, and the unemployed. The relationship between nationalist leaders and their followers was frequently fraught with tension. One such Indonesian leader, educated in Holland, spoke of his difculty in relating to the common people: “Why am I vexed by the things that fll their lives, and to which they are so attached? Why are the things that contain beauty for them . . . only senseless and displeasing for me? We intellectuals here are much closer to Europe or America than we are to the primitive Islamic culture of Java and Sumatra.”2 Thus struggles for independence were rarely if ever cohesive movements of uni- formly oppressed people. More often, they were fragile alliances representing diferent classes, ethnic groups, religions, or regions. Beneath the common goal of independence, they struggled with one another over questions of leadership, power, strategy, ideology, and the distribution of material benefts, even as they fought and negotiated with their colonial rulers. The very notion of “national self-government” posed obvious but often contentious questions: What group of people constituted the “nation” that deserved to rule itself ? And who should speak for it?

Comparing Freedom Struggles Beyond these common features of most nationalist movements lay many variations. In some places, that struggle, once begun, produced independence within a few years, four in the case of the Belgian Congo. Elsewhere it was measured in decades. chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1093

Nationalism surfaced in Vietnam in the early 1900s, but the country achieved full political independence only in the mid-1970s, having fought French colonial rulers, Japanese invaders during World War II, and U.S. military forces in the 1960s and 1970s as well as Chinese forces during a brief war in 1979. Tactics too varied considerably. In many places, West Africa for example, nationalists relied on peaceful political pressure — demonstrations, strikes, mass mobilization, and negotiations — to achieve independence. Elsewhere armed struggle was required. Eight years of bitter guerrilla warfare preceded Algerian independence from France in 1962. While all nationalist movements sought political independence for modern states, their ideologies and outlooks also difered. Many in India and the Islamic world viewed their new nations through the prism of religion, while elsewhere more secular outlooks prevailed. In Indonesia an early nationalist organization, the Islamic Union, appealed on the basis of religion, while later groups espoused Marxism. Indonesia’s primary nationalist leader, Sukarno, sought to embrace and reconcile these various outlooks. “What is Sukarno?” he asked. “A nationalist? An Islamist? A Marxist? . . . Sukarno is a mixture of all these isms.”3 Nationalist movements led by communist parties, such as those in Vietnam and China, sought major social transformations as well as freedom from foreign rule, while those in most of Africa focused on ending racial discrimination and achieving political independence with little concern about emerging patterns of domestic class inequality. Two of the most extended freedom struggles — in India and South Africa — illustrate both the variations and the complexity of this process, which was so central to twentieth-century world history. India was among the frst colonies to achieve independence and provided both a model and an inspiration to others, whereas South Africa, though not formally a colony, was among the last to throw of political domination by whites.

The Case of India: Ending British Rule Surrounded by the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, the South Asian peninsula, ■ Change commonly known as India, enjoyed a certain geographic unity. But before the twen- How did India’s national- tieth century few of its people thought of themselves as “Indians.” Cultural identities ist movement change over time? were primarily local and infnitely varied, rooted in diferences of family, caste, vil- lage, language, region, tribe, and religious practice. In earlier centuries — during the Mauryan, Gupta, and Mughal empires, for example — large areas of the subconti- nent had been temporarily enclosed within a single political system, but always these were imperial overlays, constructed on top of enormously diverse Indian societies. So too was British colonial rule, but the British difered from earlier invaders in ways that promoted a growing sense of Indian identity. Unlike previous foreign rulers, the British never assimilated into Indian society because their acute sense of racial and cultural distinctiveness kept them apart. This served to intensify Indians’ awareness of their collective diference from their alien rulers. Furthermore, British railroads, telegraph lines, postal services, administrative networks, newspapers, and 1094 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

schools as well as the English language bound India’s many regions and peoples together more frmly than ever before and facilitated communication, especially among those with a modern education. Early nineteenth-century cultural nationalists, seeking to renew and reform Hinduism, registered this sense of India as a cultural unit. The most important political expression of an all-Indian identity took shape in the Indian National Congress (INC), often called the Congress Party, which was established in 1885.This was an association of English-educated Indians — lawyers, jour- nalists, teachers, businessmen — drawn overwhelmingly from regionally prominent high-caste Hindu families. It represented the beginning of a new kind of political protest, quite diferent from the rebellions, banditry, and refusal to pay taxes that had periodically erupted in the rural areas of colonial India. The INC was largely an urban phenomenon and quite moderate in its demands. Initially, its well-educated mem- Mahatma Gandhi The most widely recognized bers did not seek to overthrow British rule; rather they hoped to gain greater inclusion and admired ﬁgure in the within the political, military, and business life of British India. From such positions global struggle against of infuence, they argued, they could better protect the interests of India than could colonial rule was India’s Mahatma Gandhi. In this their foreign-born rulers. The British mocked their claim to speak for ordinary In- famous photograph, he is dians, referring to them as “babus,” a derogatory term that implied a semi-literate “na- sitting cross-legged on the tive” with only a thin veneer of modern culture. ﬂoor, clothed in a traditional As an elite organization, the INC had difculty gaining a mass following among Indian garment called a dhoti, while nearby stands a India’s vast peasant population. That began to change in the aftermath of World spinning wheel, symbolizing War I. To attract Indian support for the war efort, the British in 1917 had promised the independent and non- “the gradual development of self-governing institutions,” a commitment that ener- industrial India that Gandhi sought. (Margaret Bourke-White/ gized nationalist politicians to demand more rapid political change. Furthermore, Time Life Pictures/Getty Images) British attacks on the Islamic Ottoman Empire antagonized India’s Muslims. The end of the war was followed by a massive infuenza epidemic, which cost the lives of millions of Indians. Finally, a series of violent repressive British actions antagonized many. This was the context in which Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) arrived on the Indian political scene and soon transformed it. Gandhi was born in the province of Gujarat in western India to a pious Hindu family of the Vaisya, or business, caste. He was married at the age of thirteen, had only a mediocre record as a student, and eagerly embraced an opportunity to study law in England when he was eighteen. He returned as a shy and not very successful lawyer, and in 1893 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1095 he accepted a job with an Indian frm in South Africa, where a substantial number of ■ Change Indians had migrated as indentured laborers during the nineteenth century. While What was the role of in South Africa, Gandhi personally experienced overt racism for the frst time and as Gandhi in India’s struggle for independence? a result soon became involved in organizing Indians, mostly Muslims, to protest that country’s policies of racial segregation. He also developed a concept of India that included Hindus and Muslims alike and pioneered strategies of resistance that he would later apply in India itself. His emerging political philosophy, known as satyagraha (truth force), was a confrontational, though nonviolent, approach to political action. As Gandhi argued, Non-violence means conscious sufering. It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil-doer, but it means the pitting of one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant. . . . [I]t is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion, his soul.4 Returning to India in 1915, Gandhi quickly rose within the leadership ranks of the INC. During the 1920s and 1930s, he applied his approach in periodic mass campaigns that drew support from an extraordinarily wide spectrum of Indians — peasants and the urban poor, intellectuals and artisans, capitalists and socialists, Hin- dus and Muslims. The British responded with periodic repression as well as conces- sions that allowed a greater Indian role in political life. Gandhi’s conduct and actions — his simple and unpretentious lifestyle, his support of Muslims, his frequent reference to Hindu religious themes — appealed widely in India and transformed the INC into a mass organization. To many ordinary people, Gandhi possessed magi- cal powers and produced miraculous events. He was the Mahatma, the Great Soul. His was a radicalism of a diferent kind. He did not call for social revolution but sought the moral transformation of individuals. He worked to raise the status of India’s untouchables, the lowest and most ritually polluting groups within the caste hierarchy, but he launched no attack on caste in general and accepted support from businessmen and their socialist critics alike. His critique of India’s situation went far beyond colonial rule. “India is being ground down,” he argued, “not under the En- glish heel, but under that of modern civilization” — its competitiveness, its material- ism, its warlike tendencies, its abandonment of religion.5 Almost alone among nationalist leaders in India or elsewhere, Gandhi opposed a modern industrial future for his country, seeking instead a society of harmonious self-sufcient villages drawing on ancient Indian principles of duty and morality. (See Document 18.4, pp. 919–21, for a more extended statement of Gandhi’s thinking.) Gandhi also embraced eforts to mobilize women for the struggle against Britain and to elevate their standing in marriage and society. While asserting the spiritual and mental equality of women and men, he regarded women as uniquely endowed with a capacity for virtue, self-sacrifce, and endurance and thus particularly well suited for nonviolent protest. They could also contribute by spinning and weaving their families’ clothing, while boycotting British textiles. But Gandhi never completely 1096 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

broke with older Indian conceptions of gender roles. “The duty of motherhood . . . ,” he wrote, “requires qualities which man need not possess. She is passive; he is active. She is essentially mistress of the house. He is the bread-winner.”6 Hundreds of thousands of women responded to Gandhi’s call for participation in the independence struggle, marching, demonstrating, boycotting, and spinning. The moral and religious context in which he cast his appeal allowed them to do so without directly challenging traditional gender roles. ■ Description Gandhi and the INC leadership had to contend with a wide range of movements, What conﬂicts and dif- parties, and approaches whose very diversity tore at the national unity that they so ferences divided India’s ardently sought. Whereas Gandhi rejected modern industrialization, his own chief nationalist movement? lieutenant, Jawaharlal Nehru, thoroughly embraced science, technology, and industry as essential to India’s future. Nor did everyone accept Gandhi’s nonviolence or his inclusive defnition of India. A militant Hindu organization preached hatred of Mus- lims and viewed India as an essentially Hindu nation. Some in the Congress Party believed that eforts to improve the position of women or untouchables were a distraction from the chief task of gaining independence. Whether to participate in British-sponsored legislative bodies without complete independence also became a divisive issue. Furthermore, a number of smaller parties advocated on behalf of particular regions or castes. India’s nationalist movement, in short, was beset by division and controversy. By far the most serious threat to a unifed movement derived from the growing divide between the country’s Hindu and Muslim populations. As early as 1906, the formation of an All-India Muslim League contradicted the Congress Party’s claim to speak for all Indians. As the British allowed more elected Indian representatives on local councils, the League demanded separate electorates, with a fxed number of seats for Muslims. As a distinct minority within India, some Muslims feared that their voice could be swamped by a numerically dominant Hindu population, despite Gandhi’s inclusive philosophy. Some Hindu politicians confrmed those fears when they cast the nationalist struggle in Hindu religious terms, hailing their country, for example, as a goddess, Bande Mataram (Mother India). When the 1937 elections gave the Congress Party control of many provincial governments, some of those governments began to enforce the teaching of Hindi in schools, rather than Urdu, which is written in a Persian script and favored by Muslims. This policy, as well as Hindu eforts to protect cows from slaughter, antagonized Muslims. As the movement for independence gained ground, the Muslim League and its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah ( JIN-uh), argued that those parts of India that had a Muslim majority should have a separate political status. They called it Pakistan, the land of the pure. In this view, India was not a single nation, as Gandhi had long argued. Jinnah put his case succinctly:

The Muslims and Hindus belong to two diferent religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures. They neither intermarry nor interdine [eat] together and, indeed, they belong to two diferent civilizations.7 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1097

With great reluctance and amid mounting 60°E 70°E 80°E 90°E SOVIET UNION 0 200 400 miles violence, Gandhi and the Congress Party f- UN cease-fire line, Jan. 1949 nally agreed to partition as the British declared 0 200 400 kilometers AFGHANISTAN their intention to leave India after World JAMMU Islamabad and CHINA War II (see Map 22.2). KASHMIR Lahore TIBET Thus colonial India became independent 30°N Amritsar in 1947 as two countries — a Muslim Paki- BHUTAN PAKISTAN . Delhi SIKKIM s R du NEPAL stan, itself divided into two wings 1,000 miles In New Delhi SIND ASSAM apart, and a mostly Hindu India governed by Ganges R. Karachi Tropic of Canc a secular state. Dividing colonial India in this er INDIA WEST Dacca fashion was horrendously painful. A million GUJARAT BENGAL Calcutta BURMA people or more died in the communal vio- 20°N PAKISTAN (BANGLADESH lence that accompanied partition, and some 1971) 12 million refugees moved from one country Bombay Arabian Hyderabad Sea Bay of to the other to join their religious compatri- Bengal ots. Gandhi himself, desperately trying to stem Madras the mounting tide of violence in India’s vil- British India before independence lages, refused to attend the independence cele- 10°N India brations. Only a year after independence, he Pakistan was assassinated by a Hindu extremist. The SRI LANKA Disputed territory, (CEYLON) great triumph of independence, secured from controlled by India Disputed territory, the powerful British Empire, was overshad- controlled by Pakistan owed by the great tragedy of the violence of partition. (See the portrait of Abdul Ghafar Map 22.2 The Partition of British South Asia The independence of British India witnessed the violent partition of the sub- Khan, a Muslim pacifst who admired the work continent into a largely Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan. Later in 1975, East of Gandhi, pp. 1098–99.) Pakistan established itself as the separate state of Bangladesh.

The Case of South Africa: Ending Apartheid The setting for South Africa’s freedom struggle was very diferent from that of India. ■ Comparison In the twentieth century, that struggle was not waged against an occupying Euro- Why was African rule in pean colonial power, for South Africa had in fact been independent of Great Britain South Africa delayed until 1994, when it had since 1910. Independence, however, had been granted to a government wholly con- occurred decades earlier trolled by a white settler minority, which represented less than 20 percent of the total elsewhere in the colonial population. The country’s black African majority had no political rights whatsoever world? within the central state. Black South Africans’ struggle therefore was against this internal opponent rather than against a distant colonial authority, as in India. Economi- cally, the most prominent whites were of British descent. They or their forebears had come to South Africa during the nineteenth century, when Great Britain was the ruling colonial power. But the politically dominant section of the white community, known as Boers or Afrikaners, was descended from the early Dutch settlers, who had arrived in the mid-seventeenth century. The term “Afrikaner” refected their image of themselves as “white Africans,” permanent residents of the continent rather than 1098 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

PORTRAIT Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Muslim Pacifst orn in 1890 in the North- environment of early twentieth- Bwest Frontier Province of century India, it soon meant anticolonial India, Abdul Ghafar colonial politics as well. Khan hailed from a well-to-do Deeply impressed with landowning family among the Gandhi’s message of nonviolent Muslim Pathan people, widely protest (see pp. 1094–96), in 1929 known for their tribal conficts. Abdul Khan established the Abdul Khan himself described Khudai Khidmatgar or “Servants his people as “inclined to be of God” movement in his home violent . . . always ready to infict region. Committed to nonvio- harm and injury on their own lence, social reform, the unity of brethren.”8 So it is all the more Abdul Ghafar Khan. (© Hulton-Deutsch the Pathan people, and the inde- remarkable that a widespread Collection/Corbis) pendence of India, the Khudai movement of Islamic nonviolent Khidmatgar soon became afliated resistance to British rule emerged among the Pathan people with the Indian National Congress, led by Gandhi, which during the 1930s and 1940s, with Abdul Khan as its leader. was the leading nationalist organization in the country. As a boy Khan attended a British mission school, During the 1930s and early 1940s, Abdul Khan’s move- which he credited with instilling in him a sense of service ment gained a substantial following in the Frontier Prov- to his people. He later turned down a chance to enter an ince, becoming the dominant political force in the area. elite military unit of the Indian army when he learned Moreover it largely adhered to its nonviolent creed in the that he would be required to defer to British ofcers junior face of severe British oppression and even massacres. In the to him in rank. His mother opposed his own plan to process, Abdul Khan acquired a prominent place beside study in an English university, and so he turned instead Gandhi in the Congress Party and an almost legendary to the “service of God and humanity.” In practice, this ini- status in his own Frontier region. His imposing 6'3" stat- tially meant social reform and educational advancement ure, his constant touring of Pathan villages, his obvious within Pathan villages, but in the increasingly nationalist commitment to Islam, his frequent imprisonment by the

colonial intruders. They had unsuccessfully sought independence from a British-ruled South Africa in a bitter struggle (the Boer War, 1899–1902), and a sense of diference and antagonism lingered. Despite continuing hostility between white South Africans of British and Afrikaner background, both felt that their way of life and standard of living were jeopardized by any move toward black African majority rule. The in- transigence of this sizable and threatened settler community helps explain why Afri- can rule was delayed until 1994, while India, lacking any such community, had achieved independence almost a half century earlier. Unlike a predominantly agrarian India, South Africa by the early twentieth century had developed a mature industrial economy, based initially in gold and diamond mining, but by midcentury including secondary industries such as steel, chemicals, automobile manufacturing, rubber processing, and heavy engineering. Particularly since the 1960s, the economy benefted from extensive foreign investment and loans. chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1099

British — all of this fostered a saintly image of the Pathan of the faith. When the Congress fnally and reluctantly leader. The wells he drank from were thought to cure dis- accepted the partition of India into two states, Abdul Khan eases. He became Badshah Khan (the king of khans) or felt betrayed. “You have thrown us to the wolves,” he said. the Frontier Gandhi. Despite his deep disappointment about partition and It was a remarkable achievement. Both Gandhi and his the immense violence that accompanied it, Abdul Khan close associate Nehru were astonished that “Abdul Gafar declared his allegiance to Pakistan. But neither he nor his Khan made his turbulent and quarrelsome people accept Servants of God followers could gain the trust of the new peaceful methods of political action, involving enormous Pakistani authorities, who refused to recognize their role sufering.”9 In large measure it had happened because as freedom fghters in the struggle against colonial rule. Abdul Khan was able to root nonviolence in both Islam His long opposition to the creation of Pakistan made his and Pathan culture. In fact, he had come to nonviolence patriotism suspect; his advocacy of Pathan unity raised well before meeting Gandhi, seeing it as necessary for over- fears that he was fostering the secession of that region; and coming the incessant feuding of his Pathan people. The his political liberalism and criticism of Pakistani military Prophet Muhammad’s mission, he declared, was “to free governments generated suspicions that he was a commu- the oppressed, to feed the poor, and to clothe the naked.”10 nist. Thus he was repeatedly imprisoned in Pakistan and Nonviolent struggle was a form of jihad or Islamic holy in conditions far worse than he had experienced in British war, and the sufering it generated was a kind of martyr- jails. He viewed Pakistan as a British efort at divide and dom. Furthermore, he linked nonviolent struggle to Pathan rule, “so that the Hindus and the Muslims might forever male virtues of honor, bravery, and strength. be at war and forget that they were brothers.”11 By the mid-1940s, however, Pathan Muslims increasingly Until his death in 1988 at the age of 98, he held frmly favored a separate state (Pakistan) rather than an alliance to his Islam-based nonviolent beliefs. But like Gandhi, he with Hindus in a unifed India, as Gandhi and Abdul Khan was far more widely admired than he was imitated. so fervently hoped. Abdul Khan’s political critics stigma- tized him as “Hindu,” while many orthodox Islamic schol- Questions: Why do you think Abdul Khan is generally ars viewed his more inclusive and nonviolent view of Islam unknown? Where does he ﬁt in the larger history of the as a challenge to their authority and their understanding twentieth century?

Almost all black Africans were involved in this complex modern economy, working in urban industries or mines, providing labor for white-owned farms, or receiving payments from relatives who did. The extreme dependence of most Africans on the white-controlled economy rendered individuals highly vulnerable to repressive action, but collectively the threat to withdraw their essential labor also gave them a powerful weapon. A further unique feature of the South African situation was the overwhelming prominence of race, expressed since 1948 in the ofcial policy of apartheid, which attempted to separate blacks from whites in every conceivable way while retaining Africans’ labor power in the white-controlled economy. An enormous apparatus of repression enforced that system. Rigid “pass laws” monitored and tried to control the movement of Africans into the cities, where they were subjected to extreme forms of social segregation. In the rural areas, a series of impoverished and overcrowded 1100 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

“native reserves,” or Bantustans, served as ethnic homelands that kept Africans divided along tribal lines. Even though racism was present in colonial India, nothing of this magnitude developed there. ■ Change As in India, various forms of opposition — resistance to conquest, rural rebel- How did South Africa’s lions, urban strikes, and independent churches — arose to contest the manifest injus- struggle against white tices of South African life. There too an elite-led political party provided an orga- domination change nizational umbrella for many of the South African resistance eforts in the twentieth over time? century. Established in 1912, the African National Congress (ANC), like its Indian predecessor, was led by male, educated, professional, and middle-class Africans who sought not to overthrow the existing order, but to be accepted as “civilized men” within it. They appealed to the liberal, humane, and Christian values that white society claimed. For four decades, its leaders pursued peaceful and moderate protest — petitions, multiracial conferences, delega- tions appealing to the authorities — even as racially based segregationist policies were implemented one after another. Women were denied full membership in the ANC until 1943 and were restricted to providing catering and entertainment services for the men. But they took action in other arenas. In 1913, they organized a successful protest against carrying passes, an issue that endured through much of the twentieth century. Rural women in the 1920s used church- based networks to organize boycotts of local shops and schools. Women were likewise prominent in trade union protests, including wage demands for domestic servants and washerwomen. By 1948, when the Afrikaner-led National Party came to power on a platform of apartheid, it was clear that peaceful protest, whether organized by men or women, had produced no meaningful movement toward racial equality. During the 1950s, a new and younger generation of the ANC leadership, which now included Nelson Mandela, broadened Nelson Mandela its base of support and launched nonviolent In April 1994, the long struggle against apartheid and white domination in South civil disobedience — boycotts, strikes, dem- Africa came to an end in the country’s ﬁrst democratic and nonracial election. The onstrations, and the burning of the hated symbol of that triumph was Nelson Mandela, long a political prisoner, head of the African National Congress, and the country’s ﬁrst black African president. He is passes that all Africans were required to shown here voting in that historic election. (© Peter Turnley/Corbis) carry. All of these actions were similar to and chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1101 inspired by the tactics that Gandhi had pioneered in South Africa and used in India twenty to thirty years earlier. The government of South Africa responded with tremendous repression, including the shooting of sixty-nine unarmed demonstrators at Sharpville in 1960, the banning of the ANC, and the imprisonment of its leadership, including Nelson Mandela. At this point, the freedom struggle in South Africa took a diferent direction than it had in India. Its major political parties were now illegal. Underground nationalist leaders turned to armed struggle, authorizing selected acts of sabotage and assassina- tion, while preparing for guerrilla warfare in camps outside the country. Active opposition within South Africa was now primarily expressed by student groups that were part of the Black Consciousness movement, an efort to foster pride, unity, and political awareness among the country’s African majority, with a particular emphasis on mobilizing women for the struggle. Such young people were at the center of an explosion of protest in 1976 in a sprawling, segregated, impoverished black neigh- borhood called Soweto, outside Johannesburg, in which hundreds were killed. The initial trigger for the uprising was the government’s decision to enforce education for Africans in the hated language of the white Afrikaners rather than English. How- ever, the momentum of the Soweto rebellion persisted, and by the mid-1980s, spreading urban violence and the radicalization of urban young people had forced the government to declare a state of emergency. Furthermore, South Africa’s black labor movement, legalized only in 1979, became increasingly active and political. In June 1986, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Soweto uprising, the Congress of South African Trade Unions orchestrated a general strike involving some 2 million workers. Beyond this growing internal pressure, South Africa faced mounting international demands to end apartheid as well. Exclusion from most international sporting events, including the Olympics; the refusal of many artists and entertainers to per- form in South Africa; economic boycotts; the withdrawal of private investment funds — all of this isolated South Africa from a Western world in which its white rulers claimed membership. None of this had any parallel in India. The combination of these internal and external pressures persuaded many white South Africans by the late 1980s that discussion with African nationalist leaders was the only alternative to a massive, bloody, and futile struggle to preserve white privileges. The outcome was the abandonment of key apartheid policies, the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the legalization of the ANC, and a prolonged process of negotiations that in 1994 resulted in national elections, which brought the ANC to power. To the surprise of almost everyone, the long nightmare of South African apartheid came to an end without a racial bloodbath (see Map 22.3, p. 1102). As in India, the South African nationalist movement was divided and conficted. Unlike India, though, these divisions did not occur along religious lines. Rather it was race, ethnicity, and ideology that generated dissension and sometimes violence. Whereas the ANC generally favored a broad alliance of everyone opposed to apartheid 1102 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

Map 22.3 South Africa ZIMBABWE E after Apartheid South Africa Under Apartheid U Q I Under apartheid, all black Bantustans B M

White South Africa A Africans were ofﬁcially desig- Z ZIMBABWE O

BOTSWANA M nated as residents of small, NAMIBIA Transvaal scattered, impoverished SWAZILAND E

U Bantustans, shown on the Orange Free State Q inset map. Many of these Natal BOTSWANA I B LESOTHO people, of course, actually M Cape Province A lived in white South Africa, Z where they worked. The main Limpopo O M map shows the new internal Polokwane organization of the country as it emerged after 1994, with the Bantustans abolished Pretoria Nelspruit and the country divided into NAMIBIA Mafikeng Gauteng Mpumalanga nine provinces. Lesotho and Northwest Johannesburg Swaziland had been British Klerksdorp SWAZILAND protectorates during the colonial era and subsequently became separate indepen- Upington dent countries, although Kimberley Free State Kwazulu-Natal surrounded by South African Bloemfontein Pietermaritzburg territory. Northern Cape LESOTHO Durban

Umtata ATLANTIC Eastern Cape INDIAN OCEAN OCEAN

Western Cape East London Cape Town 0 100 200 miles Port Elizabeth Mossel Bay 0 100 200 kilometers

(black Africans, Indians, “coloreds” or mixed-race people, and sympathetic whites), a smaller group known as the Pan Africanist Congress rejected cooperation with other racial groups and limited its membership to black Africans. During the urban upris- ings of the 1970s and 1980s, young people supporting the Black Consciousness movements and those following Mandela and the ANC waged war against each other in the townships of South African cities. Perhaps most threatening to the unity of the nationalist struggle were the separatist tendencies of the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party. Its leader, Gatsha Buthelezi, had cooperated with the apartheid state and even received funding from it. As negotiations for a transition to African rule un- SUMMING UP SO FAR folded in the early 1990s, considerable violence between Inkatha followers, mostly Zulu migrant workers, and ANC supporters broke out in a num- How and why did the anticolonial ber of cities. None of this, however, approached the massive killing of Hin- struggles in India and South dus and Muslims that accompanied the partition of India. South Africa, un- Africa differ? like India, acquired its political freedom as an intact and unifed state. chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1103

Experiments with Freedom Africa’s frst modern nationalist hero, Kwame Nkrumah (KWAH-may ehn-KROO- mah) of Ghana, paraphrased a biblical quotation when he urged his followers, “Seek ye frst the political kingdom and all these other things will be added unto you.” But would winning the political kingdom of independence or freedom from European rule really produce “all these other things” — release from oppression, industrial growth, economic development, reasonably unifed nations, and a better life for all? That was the central question confronting the new nations emerging from colonial rule. They were joined in that quest by already independent but nonindustrialized countries and regions such as China, Thailand, Ethiopia, Iran, Turkey, and Central and South America. Together they formed the bloc of nations known variously as the third world, the developing countries, or the Global South. Those countries accounted for about 90 percent of the fourfold increase in human numbers that the world experienced during the twentieth century. Between 1950 and 2000, the populations of Asia and Africa alone grew from 64 percent of the world’s total to 70 percent with an es- timated increase to 79 percent by 2050 (see Snapshot, p. 1104). That immense surge in glo bal population, at one level a great triumph for the human species, also under- lay many of the difculties these nations faced as they conducted their various experiments with freedom. Almost everywhere, the moment of independence generated something close to euphoria. Having emerged from the long night of colonial rule, free peoples had the opportunity to build anew. The developing countries would be laboratories for fresh approaches to creating modern states, nations, cultures, and economies. In the decades that followed, experiments with freedom multiplied, but the early optimism was soon tempered by the difculties and disappointments of those tasks.

Experiments in Political Order: Party, Army, and the Fate of Democracy All across the developing world, eforts to create political order had to contend with a set of common conditions. Populations were exploding, and expectations for independence ran very high, often exceeding the available resources. Many developing countries were culturally very diverse, with little loyalty to the central state. None- theless, public employment mushroomed as the state assumed greater responsibility for economic development. In conditions of widespread poverty and weak private economies, groups and individuals sought to capture the state, or parts of it, both for the salaries and status it ofered and for the opportunities for private enrichment that public ofce provided. This was the formidable setting in which developing countries had to hammer out new political systems. The range of that efort was immense: Communist Party control in China, Vietnam, and Cuba; multiparty democracy in India and South Af- rica; one-party democracy in Mexico, Tanzania, and Senegal; military regimes for a 1104 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

Snapshot World Population Growth, 1950–201112

The great bulk of the world’s population growth in the second half of the twentieth century occurred in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

North America Europe 6 Latin America and the Caribbean Africa 5 Asia

3 Population in billions Population 2

0 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2011

time in much of Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East; personal dictatorships in Uganda and the Philippines. In many places, one kind of political system followed another in kaleidoscopic succession. As colonial rule drew to a close, European authorities in many places attempted to transplant democratic institutions to colonies they had long governed with such a heavy and authoritarian hand. They established legislatures, permitted elections, allowed political parties to operate, and in general anticipated the development of con- stitutional, parliamentary, multiparty democracies similar to their own. It was in India that such a political system established its deepest roots. There Western-style democracy, including regular elections, multiple parties, civil liberties, and peaceful changes in government, has been practiced almost continuously since independence. What made this remarkable democratic continuity possible? The struggle for independence in India had been a prolonged afair, thus providing time for an Indian political leadership to sort itself out. Furthermore, the Brit- ish began to hand over power in a gradual way well before complete independence was granted in 1947. Thus a far larger number of Indians had useful administrative or chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1105 technical skills than was the case elsewhere. In sharp contrast to most African countries, for example, the nationalist movement in India was embodied in a single national party (the Congress Party), which encompassed a wide variety of other parties and interest groups. Its leaders, Gandhi and Nehru in particular, were genuinely committed to democratic practice, which, some have argued, allowed elites from the many and varied groups of Indian society to fnd a place in the political system. Even the tragic and painful partition of colonial India into two countries eliminated a major source of internal discord as independent India was born. Moreover, Indian statehood could be built on common cultural and political traditions that were far more deeply rooted than in many former colonies. Elsewhere in the colonial world, democracy proved a far more fragile transplant. ■ Change Among the new states of Africa, for example, few retained their democratic institutions What led to the erosion of beyond the initial post-independence decade. Many of the apparently popular politi- democracy and the establishment of military gov- cal parties that had led the struggle for independence lost mass support and were ernment in much of Africa swept away by military coups. When the army took power in Ghana in 1966, no one and Latin America? lifted a fnger to defend the party that had led the country to independence only nine years earlier. Other states evolved into one-party systems, and still others degenerated into personal tyrannies or dictatorships. Freedom from colonial rule certainly did not automatically generate the internal political freedoms associated with democracy. Africans sometimes suggested that their traditional cultures, based on communal rather than individualistic values and concerned to achieve consensus rather than majority rule, were not compatible with the competitiveness of party politics. Others argued that Western-style democracy was simply inadequate for the tasks of development confronting the new states. Creating national unity was surely more difcult when competing political parties identifed primarily with particular ethnic or “tribal” groups, as was frequently the case in Africa. Certainly Europe did not begin its mod- ernizing process with such a system. Why, many Africans asked, should they be expected to do so? The economic disappointments of independence also contributed to the erosion of support for democracy. By almost any measure, African economic performance since independence has been the poorest in the developing world. As a result, college and high school graduates were unable to fnd the white-collar careers they expected; urban migrants had little opportunity for work; farmers received low prices for their cash crops; consumers resented shortages and infation; and millions of impoverished and malnourished peasants lived on the brink of starvation. These were people for whom independence was unable to fulfll even the most minimal of expectations, let alone the grandiose visions of a better life that so many had embraced in the early 1960s. Since modern governments everywhere staked their legitimacy on economic performance, it is little wonder that many Africans became disafected and with- drew their support from governments they had enthusiastically endorsed only a few years earlier. Further resentments arose from the privileges of the relatively well- educated elite who had found high-paying jobs in the growing bureaucracies of the newly independent states. Such grievances often found expression in ethnic confict, 1106 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

as Africa’s immense cultural diversity became intensely politicized. An ethnically based civil war in Nigeria during the late 1960s cost the lives of millions, while in the mid- 1990s ethnic hatred led Rwanda into the realm of genocide. These economic disappointments, class resentments, and ethnic conficts provided the context for numerous military takeovers. By the early 1980s, the military had intervened in at least thirty of Africa’s forty-six independent states and actively governed more than half of them. In doing so they swept aside the old political parties and constitutions and vowed to begin anew, while promising to return power to civilians and restore democracy at some point in the future. A similar wave of military interventions swept over Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s, leaving Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, the Do- minican Republic, and other countries governed at times by their armed forces (see Map 22.4). However, the circumstances in Latin America were quite diferent from

Map 22.4 Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America UNITED STATES Military regime, dictatorship, or other authoritarian government For much of the twentieth BAHAMAS century, many Latin American 1936 Dates of authoritarian regime(s) CUBA HAITI countries experienced 1933–1940, 1950–1956, 1952–1959, 1957–1986, authoritarian governments 1959–present 1991–1996 Tropic of Cancer DOMINICAN REPUBLIC headed by military men, MEXICO 1930–1961, 1929–1994 dictators, or single parties. 20°N 1966–1978 Much of that was swept away JAMAICA BELIZE ATLANTIC during a wave of democrati- HONDURAS GUATEMALA 1932–1949, 1956–1957, OCEAN zation in the last two decades 1944–1945, 1957–1958, 1963–1971, 1972–1984 of the century. 1963–1966, 1970–1986 NICARAGUA EL SALVADOR 1936–1979 GUYANA 1932–1980, 1980–1987 1980–1982 VENEZUELA 1908–1935, COSTA RICA 1952–1958 FR. GUIANA 1948–1949 (France) PANAMA COLOMBIA 1968–1989 1953–1957 0° Equator SURINAME

ECUADOR 1963–1966, 1972–1979 PACIFIC BRAZIL PERU 1937–1945, OCEAN 1936–1939, 1964–1985 1948–1956, 1968–1980

BOLIVIA 20°S 1936, Tropic of Capricorn 1964–1982 PARAGUAY 1940–1948, URUGUAY 1954–1989 1933–1938, 0 500 1,000 miles 1976–1984 120°W CHILE 0 500 1,000 kilometers 1974–1990 ARGENTINA 40°W 40°S 1943–1958, 1966–1983

100°W 60°W 80°W chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1107 those in Africa. While military rule was something new and unexpected in Africa, Latin American armed forces had long intervened in political life. The region had also largely escaped the bitter ethnic conficts that aficted so many African states, though its class antagonisms were more clearly defned and expressed. Furthermore, Latin American societies in general were far more modernized and urbanized than those of Africa. And while newly independent African states remained linked to their former European rulers, long independent Latin American states lived in shadow of a dominant United States. “Poor Mexico,” bemoaned Porfrio Díaz, that country’s dictator before the Mexican revolution, “so far from God and so close to the United States.” Rapid population growth, chronic infation, sharp class confict, rural poverty, mass migration to city slums — such conditions combined in postwar Latin America to provoke a series of challenges to the privileges of the rich and powerful. These included guerrilla warfare in Bolivia and Colombia, short-lived left-wing governments in Guatemala, Brazil, and Chile, reformist programs elsewhere, and increasingly assertive movements of urban social protest. Perhaps most threatening was the Cuban revolution of 1959, which brought Fidel Castro to power, establishing in Latin America a communist outpost intent on spreading its revolutionary message. This was the back- drop to the wave of military coups that erupted in the 1960s and after. Intent on con- taining and counteracting such threats to the established order, they were backed by threatened local elites and often by the United States, equally fearful of growing radicalism. Castro and Allende The socialist intentions of Chile provides a fascinating case study. With a long tradition of electoral politics Salvador Allende’s govern- and rival parties, in 1970 Chileans narrowly elected to the presidency a Marxist poli- ment in Chile were demon- tician, Salvador Allende, whose Popular United Party brought together the coun- strated by his embrace of the Cuban communist leader try’s socialists and communists. Despite his modest victory at the polls, Allende soon Fidel Castro, shown here on a launched an ambitious program to achieve a peaceful transition to socialism. In an visit to Chile in 1971. (AP Photo) efort to redistribute wealth, he ordered prices frozen and wages raised. Nationali- zation of major industries followed — including copper, coal, steel, and many banks — without compensation to their former owners, many of whom were foreign corporations. In the rural areas, land reform programs soon seized the large estates, redistributing them to small farmers. And Allende warmly welcomed Fidel Castro for a month-long visit in 1971. It was an audacious efort to achieve genuinely revolutionary change by legal and peaceful means. But it failed. How much of this failure was a product of divisions within the 1108 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

ruling party and mistakes by Allende’s government remains a matter of controversy. But internal opposition mounted — from the bureaucracy, military ofcers, church hierarchy, wealthy business and landlord elites as well as various small business and middle-class elements, climaxing in a huge strike in late 1972. Furthermore, the U.S. government, which had long armed, funded, and trained military forces throughout Latin America, actively opposed the Allende regime as did U.S. corporations. A CIA document declared that “it is frm and continuing policy that Allende be over- thrown by a coup.” And in September 1973, he was. What followed was an extraordinarily repressive and long-lasting military regime, headed by General Augusto Pinochet. Political parties were outlawed and the constitution suspended. Thousands were killed, tortured, or made to disappear. Free market economic policies attracted the foreign investors who had fed the country during Allende’s regime. By the end of the 1970s, economic growth had reached an impres- sive 7 percent per year even as rural landlessness increased, workers’ wages declined, and social services shrank. Despite the democratic setbacks of the 1960s and 1970s, beginning in the early 1980s, a remarkable political reversal brought popular movements, multiparty elections, and new constitutions to a number of developing countries. It was part of an even broader late twentieth-century globalization of democracy. This worldwide trend included the end of military and autocratic rule in Spain, Portugal, and Greece as well as the stunning rise of democratic movements, parties, and institutions amid the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But the most extensive expression of this global reemergence of democracy lay in the developing countries. By 2000, almost all Latin American countries had abandoned their military-controlled regimes and returned to some form of democratic governance. So too did most African states previously ruled by soldiers, dictators, or single parties. In Asia, authoritarian regimes, some long established, gave way to more pluralistic and par- ticipatory political systems in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Iraq, and Indonesia. And in 2011, mass movements in various Arab countries —Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen — had challenged or ended the hold of entrenched, corrupt, and autocratic rulers, while proclaiming their commitment to democracy, human dignity, and honest government. What might explain this global pattern and its expression in the Global South in particular? One factor surely was the untethering of the ideas of democracy and human rights from their Western origins. By the fnal quarter of the twentieth century, democracy increasingly was viewed as a universal political principle to which all could aspire rather than an alien and imposed system deriving from the West. Democracy, like communism, feminism, modern science, and Christianity, was a Western import that took root and substantially lost its association with the West. It was therefore increasingly available as a vehicle for social protest in the rest of the world. Perhaps the most important internal factor favoring a revival of democracy lay in the apparent failure of authoritarian governments to remedy disastrous economic situations, to raise standards of living, to provide jobs for the young, and to curb per- chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1109 vasive corruption. The oppressive and sometimes brutal behavior of repressive governments humiliated and outraged many. Furthermore, the growth of civil society with its numerous voluntary groups provided a social foundation, independent of the state, for demanding change. Disafected students, professionals, urban workers, religious organizations, women’s groups, and more joined in a variety of grassroots movements to insist on democratic change as a means to a better life. Such movements found encouragement in the demands for democracy that accompanied the South African struggle against apartheid and the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European communism. And the end of the cold war reduced the willingness of the major industrial powers to underwrite their authoritarian client states. The consolidation of democratic practice in newly democratic states was a highly variable process. Some elected leaders, such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Vladimir Putin in Russia, turned authoritarian once in ofce. Even where parlia- ments existed, they were often quite circumscribed in their powers. Outright electoral fraud tainted democratic institutions in many places, while established elites and oligarchies found it possible to exercise considerable infuence even in formal democracies. Chinese authorities brutally crushed a democratic movement in 1989. The Al- gerian military sponsored elections in 1992 and then abruptly cancelled them when an Islamic party seemed poised to win. And the political future of the Arab Spring remains highly uncertain. Nonetheless, the worldwide revival of democracy represented the globalization of what had been a Western idea and the continuation of the political experiments that had begun with independence.

Experiments in Economic Development: Changing Priorities, Varying Outcomes At the top of the agenda everywhere in the Global South was economic develop- ■ Change ment, a process that meant growth or increasing production as well as distributing the What obstacles impeded fruits of that growth to raise living standards. This quest for development, now op- the economic development of third-world erating all across the planet, represented the universal acceptance of beliefs unheard countries? of not many centuries earlier — that poverty was no longer inevitable and that it was possible to deliberately improve the material conditions of life for everyone. Eco- nomic development was a central promise of all independence struggles, and it was increasingly the standard by which people measured and granted legitimacy to their governments. Achieving economic development, however, was no easy or automatic task. It took place in societies sharply divided by class, religion, ethnic group, and gender and in the face of explosive population growth. In many places, colonial rule had provided only the most slender foundations for modern development, for new nations often came to independence with low rates of literacy, few people with managerial experience, a weak private economy, and transportation systems oriented to export rather than national integration. Furthermore, the entire efort occurred in a world split by rival superpowers and economically dominated by the powerful capitalist economies 1110 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

of the West. Despite their political independence, most developing countries had little leverage in negotiations with the wealthy nations of the Global North and their immense transnational corporations. It was hardly an auspicious environment in which to seek a fundamental economic transformation. Beyond these difculties lay the question of what strategies to pursue. The aca- demic feld of “development economics” was new; its experts disagreed and often changed their minds; and conficting political pressures, both internal and international, only added to the confusion. All of this resulted in considerable controversy, changing policies, and much experimentation. ■ Change One fundamental issue lay in the role of the state. All across the developing world How and why did think- and particularly in newly independent nations, most people expected that state au- ing about strategies for thorities would take major responsibility for spurring the economic development of economic development their countries. After all, the private economy was weakly developed; few entrepre- change over time? neurs had substantial funds to invest; the example of rapid Soviet industrialization under state direction was hopeful; and state control held the promise of protecting vulnerable economies from the ravages of international capitalism. Some state-directed economies had real successes. China launched a major industrialization efort and massive land reform under the leadership of the Communist Party. A communist Cuba, even while remaining dependent on its sugar production, wiped out illiteracy and provided basic health care to its entire population, raising life expectancy to seventy- six years by 1992, equivalent to that of the United States. Elsewhere as well — in Tur- key, India, South Korea, and much of Africa — the state provided tarifs, licenses, loans, subsidies, and overall planning, while most productive property was owned privately. Yet in the last three decades of the twentieth century, an earlier consensus in favor of state direction largely collapsed, replaced by a growing dependence on the market to generate economic development. This was most apparent in the abandonment of much communist planning in China and the return to private farming (see p. 1062). India and many Latin American and African states privatized their state- run industries and substantially reduced the role of the state in economic afairs. In part, this sharp change in economic policies refected the failure, mismanagement, and corruption of many state-run enterprises, but it also was infuenced by the collapse in the Soviet Union of the world’s frst state-dominated economy. Western pressures, exercised through international organizations such as the World Bank, likewise pushed developing countries in a capitalist direction. In China and India, the new approach generated rapid economic growth, but also growing inequalities and social confict. But as the new millennium dawned, a number of developing countries once again asserted a more prominent role for the state in their quests for economic development and social justice. In China, Russia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, India, and elsewhere, state-owned companies buy and sell shares on the stock market, seeking profts in an economic system that has been called “state capitalism.” Thus the search for an appropriate balance between state action and market forces in the man- agement of modern economies continues. chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1111

A related issue involved the most appropriate posture for developing countries to adopt toward the world market as they sought to industrialize. Should they try to shield themselves from the infuences of international capitalism, or were they better of vigorously engaging with the global economy? In the aftermath of the Great De- pression of the 1930s, many Latin American countries followed the frst path. Their traditional reliance on exporting agricultural products and raw materials had largely collapsed as the world economy sharply contracted (see p. 992). The alternative, known as import substitution industrialization, sought to reduce their dependence on the uncertain global marketplace by processing their own raw materials and manufacturing their own consumer goods behind high tarif barriers if necessary. Brazil, for example, largely followed such policies from the 1930s through the late 1970s with some success. Between 1968 and 1974, the country experienced rapid industrial growth, dubbed the “Brazilian miracle.” By the early 1980s, the country produced about 90 percent of its own consumer goods. But Brazil’s industrialization was also accompanied by massive investment by foreign corporations, by the accumulation of a huge national debt to foreign lenders, by periodic bouts of infation, and by very high levels of social inequality and poverty. Brazil’s military president famously remarked in 1971: “The economy is doing fne but the people are doing badly.” The classic contrast to Latin American approaches to industrial development lay in East Asia where South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore chose a diferent strategy. Rather than focusing on industrial production for domestic consump- tion, they chose to specialize in particular products for an export market — textiles, electronic goods, and automobiles, for example. Many of these industries were labor intensive, drawing large numbers of women into the workforce, though at very low wages. Initiated in the 1960s, this export-driven development strategy generated rapid economic growth, propelling these countries into the ranks of the industrialized world by the end of the century. In the 1980s and 1990s, Brazil too entered the world market more vigorously, developing export industries in automobiles, steel, aircraft, computers, and more. Other issues as well inspired debate. In many places, an early emphasis on city- based industrial development, stirred by visions of a rapid transition to modernity, led to a neglect or exploitation of rural areas and agriculture. This “urban bias” subsequently came in for much criticism and some adjustment in spending priorities. A growing recognition of the role of women in agriculture led to charges of “male bias” in development planning and to mounting eforts to assist women farmers directly. Women also were central to many governments’ increased interest in curtailing population growth. Women’s access to birth control, education, and employment, it turned out, provided powerful incentives to limit family size. Another debate pitted the advocates of capital- and technology-driven projects (dams and factories, for example) against those who favored investment in “human capital,” such as education, technical training, health care, and nutrition. The benefts and drawbacks of foreign aid, investment, and trade have likewise been contentious issues. 1112 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

Economic development was never simply a matter of technical expertise or deciding among competing theories. Ev- ery decision was political, involving win- ners and losers in terms of power, advan- tage, and wealth. Where to locate schools, roads, factories, and clinics, for example, provoked endless controversies, some of them expressed in terms of regional or ethnic rivalries. It was an experimental process, and the stakes were high. The results of those experiments have varied considerably. (See Snapshot in Chapter 23, p. 1145, for global variations in economic development.) East Asian countries in general have had the Microloans strongest record of economic growth. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Bangladesh’s Grameen Kong were dubbed “newly industrialized countries,” and China boasted the most rapid Bank pioneered an innova- tive approach to economic economic growth in the world by the end of the twentieth century, replacing Japan development by offering as the world’s second-largest economy. In the 1990s, Asia’s other giant, India, opened modest loans to poor people, itself more fully to the world market and launched rapid economic growth with a enabling them to start small powerful high-tech sector and an expanding middle class. Oil-producing countries businesses. Here a group of women who received such reaped a bonanza when they were able to demand much higher prices for that essen- loans meet in early 2004 to tial commodity in the 1970s and after. By 2008 Brazil ranked as the eighth-largest make an installment pay- economy in the world with a rapidly growing industrial sector, while Turkey and In- ment to an ofﬁcer of the bank. (© Raﬁqur Rahman/Reuters/ donesia numbered in the top twenty. Limited principally to Europe, North America, Corbis) and Japan in the nineteenth century, industrialization had become a global phenomenon by the early twenty-frst. Elsewhere, the story was very diferent. In most of Africa, much of the Arab world, and parts of Asia — regions representing about one-third of the world’s population — there was little sign of catching up and frequent examples of declining standards of living since the end of the 1960s. Between 1980 and 2000, the average income in forty- three of Africa’s poorest countries dropped by 25 percent, pushing living standards for many below what they had been at independence. But in the frst decade of the twenty-frst century, a number of African countries began to experience more encouraging economic growth. Scholars and politicians alike argue about the reasons for such sharp diferences in economic performance. Variables such as geography and natural resources, difering colonial experiences, variations in regional cultures, the degree of political stability and social equality, state economic policies, population growth rates, and varying forms of involvement with the world economy — all of these have been invoked to explain the widely diverging trajectories among developing countries. chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1113

Experiments with Culture: The Role of Islam in Turkey and Iran The quest for economic development represented the embrace of an emerging global ■ Comparison culture of modernity with its scientifc outlook, its technological achievements, and In what ways did cultural its focus on material values. Developing countries were also exposed to the changing revolutions in Turkey and Iran reﬂect different culture of the West, including feminism, rock and rap, sexual permissiveness, con- understandings of the sumerism, and democracy. But the peoples of the Global South had inherited cultural role of Islam in modern patterns from the more distant past as well. A common issue all across the developing societies? world involved the uneasy relationship between these older traditions and the more recent outlooks associated with modernity and the West. How should traditional African “medicine men” relate to modern hospitals? What happens to Confucian- based family values when confronted with the urban and commercial growth of recent Chinese history? Such tensions provided the raw material for a series of cultural experiments in the twentieth century, and nowhere were they more consequential than in the Islamic world. No single answer emerged to the question of how Islam and modernity should relate to each other, but the experience of Turkey and Iran il- Map 22.5 Iran, Turkey, lustrate two quite diferent approaches to this fundamental issue (see Map 22.5). (See and the Middle East Documents: Contending for Islam, pp. 1120–28, for more on this topic.) Among the great contrasts of a very diverse Middle East In the aftermath of World War I, modern Turkey emerged from the ashes of the has been between Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, led by an energetic general, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (AT-tuh-terk) most secular and Western- (1881–1938), who fought of British, French, Italian, and Greek eforts to dismember oriented country of the region, and Iran, home to the most what was left of the old empire. Often compared to Peter the Great in Russia (see sustained Islamic revolution p. 638), Atatürk then sought to transform his country into a modern, secular, and in the area. national state. Such ambitions were not entirely new, for

ROMANIA RUSSIA C KAZAKH. UZBEKISTAN they built upon the eforts of nineteenth-century Otto- a s Black Sea p BULGARIA GEORGIA ia man reformers, who, like Atatürk, greatly admired Eu- MAC. n S ARM. AZER. e TURKMENISTAN a ropean Enlightenment thinking and sought to bring its GREECE TURKEY AZER. benefts to their country. AFGHAN. Cyprus SYRIA To Atatürk and his followers, to become modern LEBANON IRAN Mediterranean Sea IRAQ meant “to enter European civilization completely.” ISRAEL JORDAN PAK. P They believed that this required the total removal of er KUWAIT sia n G Islam from public life, relegating it to the personal and ulf EGYPT BAHRAIN Gulf of LIBYA Oman private realm. Atatürk argued that “Islam will be ele- QATAR SAUDI UNITED OMAN vated, if it will cease to be a political instrument.” In fact, ARAB Red Sea ARABIA he sought to broaden access to the religion by translat- EMIRATES ing the Quran into Turkish and issuing the call to prayer CHAD YEMEN in Turkish rather than Arabic. SUDAN ERITREA Arabian Sea Atatürk largely ended, however, the direct politi- DJIBOUTI cal role of Islam. The old sultan or ruler of the Otto- SOMALIA Israeli-occupied 0 250 500 miles man Empire, whose position had long been sanctifed territory ETHIOPIA by Islamic tradition, was deposed as Turkey became a 0 250 500 kilometers 1114 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

republic. Furthermore the caliphate, by which Ottoman sultans had claimed leadership of the entire Islamic world, was abolished. Various Suf organizations, sacred tombs, and religious schools were closed and a number of religious titles abolished. Islamic courts were likewise dissolved, while secular law codes, modeled on those of Europe, replaced the sharia. In history textbooks, pre-Islamic Turkish culture was celebrated as the foundation for all ancient civilizations. The Arabic script in which the Turkish language had long been written was exchanged for a new Western-style alphabet that made literacy much easier but rendered centuries of Ottoman culture inaccessible to these newly literate people. (See Document 22.1, pp. 1120–21, for an example of Atatürk’s thinking.) The most visible symbols of Atatürk’s revolutionary program occurred in the realm of dress. Turkish men were ordered to abandon the traditional headdress known as the fez and to wear brimmed hats. According to Atatürk, A civilized, international dress is worthy and appropriate for our nation, and we will wear it. Boots or shoes on our feet, trousers on Westernization in Turkey our legs, shirt and tie, jacket and waistcoat — Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, often appeared in and of course, to complete these, a cover public in elegant European dress, symbolizing for his people a sharp break 13 with traditional Islamic ways of living. Here he is dancing with his adopted with a brim on our heads. daughter at her high-society wedding in 1929. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Although women were not forbidden to wear the veil, many elite women abandoned it and set the tone for feminine fashion in Turkey. In Atatürk’s view, the emancipation of women was a cornerstone of the new Tur- key. In a much-quoted speech, he declared: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West.14 Thus polygamy was abolished; women were granted equal rights in divorce, inheri- tance, and child custody; and in 1934 Turkish women gained the right to vote and hold public ofce, a full decade before French women gained that right. Public beaches were now opened to women as well. chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1115

These reforms represented a “cultural revolution” unique in the Islamic world of the time, and they were imposed against considerable opposition. After Atatürk’s death in 1938, some of them were diluted or rescinded. The call to prayer returned to the traditional Arabic in 1950, and various political groups urged a greater role for Islam in the public arena. Since 2002, a moderate Islamic party has governed the country, while the political role of the military, long the chief defender of Turkish secularism, diminished. By 2010 an earlier prohibition on women wearing headscarves in universities had largely ended. Nevertheless, the essential secularism of the Turkish state remained an enduring legacy of the Atatürk revolution. But elsewhere in the Is- lamic world, other solutions to the question of Islam and modernity took shape. A very diferent answer emerged in Iran in the fnal quarter of the twentieth century. That country seemed an unlikely place for an Islamic revolution. Under the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (r. 1941–1979), Iran had undertaken what many saw as a quite successful and largely secular modernization efort. The country had great wealth in oil, a powerful military, a well-educated elite, and a solid alliance with the United States. Furthermore, the shah’s so-called White Revolution, intended to promote the country’s modernization, had redistributed land to many of the Iran’s impoverished peasantry, granted women the right to vote, invested substantially in rural health care and education, initiated a number of industrial projects, and ofered workers a share in the profts of those industries. But beneath the surface of apparent success, discontent and resentment were brewing. Traditional small-scale merchants felt threatened by an explosion of imported Western goods and by competition from large businesses. Religious leaders, the ulama, were ofended by secular education programs that bypassed Islamic schools and by state control of religious institutions. Educated professionals found Iran’s reliance on the West dis- turbing. Rural migrants to the country’s growing cities, especially Tehran, faced ris- ing costs and uncertain employment. A repressive and often brutal government allowed little outlet for such grievances. Thus, opposition to the shah’s regime came to center on the country’s many mosques, where Iran’s Shi’ite religious leaders invoked memories of earlier persecu- tion and martyrdom as they mobilized that opposition and called for the shah’s removal. The emerging leader of that movement was the high-ranking Shia cleric Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini (ko-MAY-nee) (1902–1989), who in 1979 returned from long exile in Paris to great acclaim. By then, massive urban demonstrations, strikes, and defections from the military had eroded support for the shah, who abdicated the throne and left the country. What followed was also a cultural revolution, but one that moved in precisely the opposite direction from that of Atatürk’s Turkey — toward, rather than away from, the Islamization of public life. The new government defned itself as an Is- lamic republic, with an elected parliament and a constitution, but in practice conservative Islamic clerics, headed by Khomeini, exercised dominant power. A Council of Guardians, composed of leading legal scholars, was empowered to interpret the 1116 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

Women and the Ira- constitution, to supervise elections, and to review legislation — all designed to ensure nian Revolution compatibility with a particular vision of Islam. Opposition to the new regime was One of the goals of Iran’s Islamic revolution was to harshly crushed, with some 1,800 executions in 1981 alone for those regarded as “wag- 15 enforce a more modest and ing war against God.” traditional dress code for the Khomeini believed that the purpose of government was to apply the law of Allah country’s women. In this as expressed in the sharia (see Document 22.2). Thus all judges now had to be com- photo from 2004, a woman clad in hijab and talking on petent in Islamic law, and those lacking that qualifcation were dismissed. The secular her cell phone walks past law codes under which the shah’s government had operated were discarded in favor of a poster of the Ayatollah those based solely on Islamic precedents. Islamization likewise profoundly afected Khomeini, who led that revolution in 1979. (AP Images) the domain of education and culture. In June 1980, the new government closed some 200 universities and colleges for two years while textbooks, curricula, and faculty were “purifed” of un-Islamic infuences. Elementary and secondary schools, largely secular under the shah, now gave priority to religious instruction and the teaching of Arabic, even as about 40,000 teachers lost their jobs for lack of sufcient Islamic piety. Pre-Islamic Persian literature and history were now out of favor, while the history of Islam and Iran’s revolution predominated in schools and the mass media. Western loan words were purged from the Farsi language, replaced by their Arabic equivalents. As in Turkey, the role of women became a touchstone of this Islamic cultural revolution. By 1983, all women were required to wear the modest head-to-toe cover- chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1117 ing known as hijab, a regulation enforced by roving groups of militants or “revolutionary guards.” Those found with “bad hijab” were subject to harassment and sometimes lashings or imprisonment. Sexual segregation was imposed in schools, parks, beaches, and public transportation. The legal age of marriage for girls, set at eighteen under the shah, was reduced to nine with parental consent and thirteen, later raised to ffteen, without it. Married women could no longer fle for divorce or attend school. Yet, despite such restrictions, many women supported the revolution and over the next several decades found far greater opportunities for employment and higher education than before. By the early twenty-frst century, almost 60 percent of university students were women. And women’s right to vote remained intact. While Atatürk’s cultural revolution of Westernization and secularism was largely an internal afair that freed Turkey from the wider responsibilities of the caliphate, Khomeini clearly sought to export Iran’s Islamic revolution. He openly called for the replacement of insufciently Islamic regimes in the Middle East and ofered training and support for their opponents. In Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and elsewhere, Khomeini appealed to Shi’ite minorities and other disafected people, and Iran became a model to which many Islamic radicals looked. An eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s highly secularized Iraq (1980–1988) was one of the outcomes and generated enormous casualties. That confict refected the diferences between Arabs and Persians, between Sunni and Shia versions of Islam, and between a secular Iraqi regime and Khomeini’s revolutionary Islamic government. After Khomeini’s death in 1989, some elements of this revolution eased a bit. For a time, enforcement of women’s dress code was not so stringent, and a more moderate government came to power in 1997, raising hopes for a loosening of strict Islamic regulations. By 2005, however, more conservative elements were back in control and a new crackdown on women’s clothing soon surfaced. A heavily disputed election in 2009 revealed substantial opposition to the country’s rigid Islamic regime. Iran’s on- going Islamic revolution, however, did not mean the abandonment of economic modernity. The country’s oil revenues continued to fund its development, and by LearningCurve the early twenty-frst century, Iran was actively pursuing nuclear power and perhaps bedfordstmartins.com /strayer/LC nuclear weapons, in defance of Western opposition to these policies. Refections: History in the Middle of the Stream Historians are usually more at ease telling stories that have clear endings, such as those that describe ancient Egyptian civilization, Chinese maritime voyages, the collapse of the Aztec Empire, or the French Revolution. There is a fnality to these stories and a distance from them that makes it easier for historians to assume the posture of de- tached observers, even if their understandings of those events change over time. Fi- nality, distance, and detachment are harder to come by when historians are describ- ing the events of the past century, for many of its processes are clearly not over. The United States’ role as a global superpower and its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 1118 part 6 / the most recent century, 1914–2012

fate of democracy in Latin America and the Arab world, the rise of China and India as economic giants, the position of Islam in Turkey and Iran — all of these are un- fnished stories, their outcomes unknown and unknowable. In dealing with such matters, historians write from the middle of the stream, often uncomfortably, rather than from the banks, where they might feel more at ease. In part, that discomfort arises from questions about the future that such issues in- evitably raise. Can the spread of nuclear weapons be halted? Will democracy four- ish globally? Are Islamic and Christian civilizations headed for a global clash? Can African countries replicate the economic growth experience of India and China? Historians in particular are uneasy about responding to such questions because they are so aware of the unexpectedness and surprising quality of the historical process. Yet those questions about the future are legitimate and important, for as the nineteenth- century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard remarked: “Life can only be under- stood backward, but it is lived forward.” History, after all, is the only guide we have to the possible shape of that future. So, like everyone before us, we stumble on, both individually and collectively, largely in the dark, using analogies from the past as we make our way ahead. These vast uncertainties about the future provide a useful reminder that although we know the outcomes of earlier human stories — the Asian and African struggles for independence, for example — those who lived that history did not. Such awareness can perhaps engender in us a measure of humility and greater sympathy with those whose lives we study. However we may difer from our ancestors across time and place, we share with them an immense ignorance about what the future holds.

Second Thoughts What’s the Signiﬁcance? LearningCurve Check what you know. decolonization, 1088–92 Black Consciousness/Soweto, 1101 bedfordstmartins.com Indian National Congress, 1094 military government, 1105–08 /strayer/LC Mahatma Gandhi/satyagraha, 1094–97 globalization of democracy, 1108–09 Online Study Guide Muslim League, 1096 import substitution and export-led bedfordstmartins.com Muhammad Ali Jinnah, 1096 industriali zation, 1111 /highschool/strayer Abdul Ghaffar Khan, 1098–99 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1113–15 African National Congress, 1100–02 Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, 1115–17 Nelson Mandela, 1100–02

Big Picture Questions 1. In what ways did the colonial experience and the struggle for independence shape the agenda of developing countries in the second half of the twentieth century? 2. How would you compare the historical experiences of India and China in the twentieth century? chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present 1119

3. From the viewpoint of the early twenty-ﬁrst century, to what extent had the goals of nationalist or independence movements been achieved? 4. Looking Back: To what extent did the struggle for independence and the postcolonial experience of African and Asian peoples in the twentieth century parallel or diverge from that of the earlier “new nations” in the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Next Steps: For Further Study For Web sites and additional documents related to this Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (1989). A brilliant ﬁctional account of post-independence chapter, see Make History at Nigeria by that country’s foremost novelist. bedfordstmartins.com Frederick Cooper, Africa since 1940 (2002). A readable overview of the coming of independence /highschool/strayer. and efforts at development by a leading historian of Africa. Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (2007). A thoughtful account of India’s ﬁrst six decades of independence. John Isbister, Promises Not Kept (2006). A well-regarded consideration of the obstacles to and struggles for development in the Global South. Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (1995). Mandela’s account of his own amazing life as nationalist leader and South African statesman. W. David McIntyre, British Decolonization, 1946–1997 (1998). A global history of the demise of the British Empire. Complete Site on Mahatma Gandhi, http://www.mkgandhi.org. A wealth of resources for exploring the life of Gandhi. Documents Considering the Evidence: Contending for Islam

ver the past century, the growing intrusion of the West and of modern Osecular culture into the Islamic world has prompted acute and highly visible debate among Muslims. Which ideas and infuences fowing from the West could Muslims safely utilize and which should they decisively reject? Are women’s rights and democracy compatible with Islam? To what extent should Islam fnd expression in public life as well as in private religious practice? The documents that follow show something of these controversies while illustrat- ing sharp variations in the understanding of Islam.

Document 22.1 A Secular State for an Islamic Society

Modern Turkey emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and adopted a distinctive path of modernization, Westernization, and secularism under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (see pp. 1113–15). Such policies sought to remove Islam from any signifcant role in public life, restricting it to the realm of personal devotion, and included abolition of the caliphate, by which Ottoman rulers had claimed leadership of the entire Is- lamic world. In a speech delivered in 1927, Atatürk explained and justifed these policies, which went against the grain of much Islamic thinking. ■ On what grounds did Atatürk justify the abolition of the caliphate? ■ What additional actions did he take to remove Islam from a public or political role in the new Turkish state? ■ What can you infer about Atatürk’s view of Islam? ■ How did Atatürk’s conception of a Turkish state difer from that of Ottoman authorities? In what ways did he build upon Ottoman reforms of the nineteenth century? (See pp. 944–46 in Chapter 19.)

1120 considering the evidence / documents: contending for islam 1121

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Speech to the General Congress of the Republican Party 1927

ur Ottoman rulers] hoped to unite the en- reformist plans] addressed itself to the people in the [Otire Islamic world in one body, to lead it and following words: “We want the re-establishment of to govern it. For this purpose, [they] assumed the the Caliphate; we are satisfed with the religious law; title of Caliph.° . . . It is an unrealizable aim to at- we shall protect the Medressas,° the Tekkes,° the pi- tempt to unite in one tribe the various races existing ous institutions, the Softahs,° the Sheikhs,° and their on the earth, thereby abolishing all boundaries. . . . disciples. . . . The party of Mustapha Kemal, having If the Caliph and the Caliphate were to be abolished the Caliphate, is breaking Islam into ruins; invested with a dignity embracing the whole of they will make you into unbelievers . . . they will Islam . . . , a crushing burden would be imposed on make you wear hats.” Can anyone pretend that the Turkey. . . . [Furthermore], will Persia or Afghani- style of propaganda used by the Party was not full stan, which are [Muslim] states, recognize the au- of these reactionary appeals? . . . thority of the Caliph in a single matter? No, and Gentlemen, it was necessary to abolish the fez,° this is quite justifable, because it would be in con- which sat on our heads as a sign of ignorance, of fa- tradiction to the independence of the state, to the naticism, of hatred to progress and civilization, and sovereignty of the people. to adopt in its place the hat, the customary head- [The current constitution] laid down as the frst dress of the whole civilized world, thus showing that duty of the Grand National Assembly that “the pre- no diference existed in the manner of thought be- scriptions of the Shari’a° should be put into force. . . .” tween the Turkish nation and the whole family of [But] if a state, having among its subjects elements civilized mankind. . . . [Thus] there took place the professing diferent religions and being compelled closing of the Tekkes, of the convents, and of the to act justly and impartially toward all of them . . . , mausoleums, as well as the abolition of all sects and it is obliged to respect freedom of opinion and all kinds of [religious] titles. . . . conscience. . . . The Muslim religion includes free- Could a civilized nation tolerate a mass of people dom of religious opinion. . . . Will not every grown- who let themselves be led by the nose by a herd up person in the new Turkish state be free to select of Sheikhs, Dedes, Seids, Tschelebis, Babas, and his own religion? . . . When the frst favorable oppor- Emirs°. . . . Would not one therewith have commit- tunity arises, the nation must act to eliminate these ted the greatest, most irreparable error to the cause superfuities [the enforcement of sharia] from our of progress and awakening? Constitution. . . . Under the mask of respect for religious ideas and dogmas, the new Party [in opposition to Atatürk’s °Medressas: Islamic schools. °Tekkes: places for Suf worship. °Caliph: successor to the prophet Muhammad. °Softahs: students in religious schools. °Shari’a: Islamic law. °Sheikhs: Suf masters. Source: A Speech Delivered by Ghazi Mustapha Kemal, October 1927 (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1929), 377–79, °fez: a distinctive Turkish hat with no brim. 591–93, 595–98, 717, 721–22. °Sheikhs . . . Emirs: various religious titles. 1122 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present

Document 22.2 Political Islam

In sharp contrast to Turkey, an Islamic revolution in Iran brought to power in 1979 a government committed to the thorough Islamization of public life (see pp. 1115–17). That revolution had been inspired and led by the Ayatollah Kho- meini (1902–1989), an Iranian religious scholar, who became the rallying point for those opposed to the regime of the Shah of Iran, which was strongly backed by the United States. Document 22.2 provides a sample of Khomeini’s thinking about imperialism and Islamic government, written well before the revolution actually occurred. As the Supreme Leader of Iran during the 1980s, he was in a position to put many of those ideas into practice. ■ How does Khomeini defne the obstacles to achieving a proper government and society in Iran? ■ How would you summarize his case against European imperialism and the Shah’s government? ■ In what ways does Khomeini seek to apply Islamic principles in the public life of Iran? What is his view of Iranian popular culture? ■ What kind of government does Khomeini foresee for Iran? ■ To whom might Khomeini’s views be most appealing? What kinds of people might oppose them?

Ayatollah Khomeini Writings and Declarations 1941, 1970

rom the very beginning, the historical move- of those who desire freedom and independence. It Fment of Islam has had to contend with the is the school of those who struggle against imperi- Jews, for it was they who frst established anti-Is- alism. . . . lamic propaganda . . . Later they were joined by Islam does not recognize monarchy and heredi- other groups . . . These new groups [Europeans] be- tary succession . . . Islam has laid down no laws for gan their imperialist penetration of the Muslim the practice of usury [lending money at high inter- countries about three hundred years ago, and they est rates], for banking with usury, for the consump- regarded it as necessary to work for the extirpation tion of alcohol, or for the cultivation of sexual of Islam . . . vices, having radically prohibited all of these . . . Islam is the religion of militant individuals who The agents of imperialism sometimes write . . . are committed to truth and justice. It is the religion that the legal provisions of Islam are too harsh . . . They [imperialists] kill people for possessing ten Source: Hamid Algar, trans., Islam and Revolution: gram of heroin . . . When Islam, however, stipulates Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (1940-1980) that the drinker of alcohol should receive eighty (Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press, 1981), 27–28, 31, 33–34, lashes, they consider it “too harsh.” . . . They are not 37–38, 41, 43–44, 48–51, 54, 171–173. aware that these penal provisions of Islam are in- considering the evidence / documents: contending for islam 1123 tended to keep great nations from being destroyed integrated and virtuous human beings who are walk- by corruption. Sexual vice has now reached such ing embodiments of the law . . . proportions that it is destroying entire generations, We see, too, that together, the imperialists and corrupting our youth and causing them to neglect the tyrannical self-seeking rulers have divided the all forms of work . . . Islamic homeland. They have separated the various Their plan is to keep us backward, to keep us in segments of the Islamic umma from each other and our present miserable state, so that they can exploit artifcially created separate nations. There once ex- our riches, our underground wealth, our lands, and isted the great Ottoman state, and that, too, the im- our human resources . . . Instead of surrendering to perialists divided . . . the injunctions of Islam, which provide a solution [T]he imperialists have also imposed on us an to the problem of poverty, they and their agents unjust economic order, and thereby divided our wish to go on living in huge palaces and enjoying people into two groups: oppressors and oppressed. lives of abominable luxury. Hundreds of millions of Muslims are hungry and In the time of the Prophet, laws were not merely deprived of all form of health care and education, expounded . . . ; they were also implemented. The while minorities comprised of the wealth and Messenger of God . . . implemented the penal pro- powerful live a life of indulgence, licentiousness, visions of Islam: he cut of the hand of the thief and and corruption. . . . It is the duty of Islamic scholars administered lashings and stonings. The successor and all Muslims to put an end to this system of op- to the Prophet must do the same . . . Know that it is pression and for the sake of the well-being of hun- your duty to establish an Islamic government. dreds of millions of human beings to overthrow This slogan of the separation of religion and these oppressive governments and form an Islamic politics and the demand that Islamic scholars not government. intervene in social and political afairs have been The infuence and sovereignty of Islam in soci- formulated and propagated by the imperialists; it is ety have declined; the nation of Islam has fallen vic- only the irreligious who repeat them. tim to division and weakness; the laws of Islam have According to one of the noble verses of the remained in abeyance and have been subjected to Quran, the ordinances of Islam are . . . permanent change and modifcation; and the imperialist have and must be enacted until the end of time. propagated foreign laws and alien culture . . . , caus- The laws of the sharia embrace a diverse body ing people to be infatuated with the West . . . We of laws and regulations, which amounts to a com- need proper and righteous organs of government; plete social system. In this system of laws, all the that much is self-evident. needs of man have been met: his dealings with We know that all of this [Islamic government] neighbors, fellow citizens, and clans as well as chil- is unpalatable to those who have grown up with dren and relatives; the concerns of private and mar- lechery, treachery, music, and dancing, and a thou- ital life; regulations concerning war and peace and sand other varieties of corruption. Of course they intercourse with other nations; penal and commer- regard the civilization and advancement of the cial law; regulations pertaining to trade and agricul- country as dependent upon women’s going naked ture. Islamic law contains provisions relating to the in the streets or . . . turning half the population into preliminaries of marriage and the form in which it workers by unveiling them . . . They will not agree should be contracted, and others relating to the de- to the country’s being administered rationally and velopment of the embryo in the womb and what in accordance with God’s law. We have nothing to food parents should eat at the time of conception. say to those whose powers of perception are so lim- It further stipulates the duties that are incumbent ited that they regard the wearing of European upon them while the infant is being suckled and hats . . . as a sign of national progress. . . . With a Eu- specifes how the child should be reared and how ropean hat on your head, you would parade around the husband and wife should relate to each other the streets enjoying the naked girls, taking pride in and to their children. Islam provides laws and in- this “achievement” totally heedless of the fact that struction for all of these matters, aiming . . . to produce meanwhile, the historic patrimony of the country 1124 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present was being plundered from one end to the other, all smugglers must change in order for the country its sources of wealth were being carried of . . . to change. Otherwise you will experience worse [T]hese idiotic and treacherous rulers, these times than these, times so bad that the present will ofcials — high and low — these reprobates and seem like paradise by comparison.

Document 22.3 Progressive Islam

In the early twenty-frst century, the international face of an assertive Islamic radicalism was that of Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaeda organization launched the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and called for the overthrow of compromised governments in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Islamic world (see pp. 1157–60). Substantial numbers of Muslims no doubt shared bin Laden’s outrage at the sorry state of many Muslim societies as well as his opposition to heavy U.S. backing for the state of Israel and to American military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But bin Laden and his followers were certainly not the only voices laying claim to Islam in the aftermath of 9/11. All across the Islamic world, others argued that Muslims could retain their distinctive religious sensibility while embracing democracy, women’s rights, technological progress, freedom of thought, and religious pluralism. Such thinkers were following in the tradition of nineteenth-century Islamic modernism (see p. 945), even as they re- called earlier centuries of Islamic intellectual and scientifc achievement and religious tolerance. That viewpoint was expressed in a pamphlet composed by a leading American Muslim scholar, translator, and Suf teacher, Sheikh Kabir Helminski, in 2009. It is also refected in Document 23.4, pp. 1178–79, which argues for women’s rights within an Islamic framework. ■ Against what charges does Sheikh Kabir seek to defend Islam? How does this document refect the experience of 9/11? ■ In what ways are Sheikh Kabir’s views critical of radical or “fundamen- talist” ideas and practices? ■ How does this document, together with Document 23.4, articulate the major features of a more progressive or liberal Islam? What kinds of arguments are employed to make their case? ■ To whom might these arguments appeal? What obstacles do they face in being heard within the Islamic world? ■ How might the Ayatollah Khomeini (Document 22.2) or Osama bin Laden have responded to the arguments in this document? In what ways does this vision of a “liberal” or “moderate” Islam difer from those of Kemal Atatürk (Document 22.1)? considering the evidence / documents: contending for islam 1125

Kabir Helminski “Islam and Human Values” 2009

f the word “Islam” gives rise to fear or mistrust [T]he acceptance of Islam must be an act of free Itoday, it is urgent that American Muslims clarify will. Conversion by any kind of coercion was uni- what we believe Islam stands for in order to dispel versally condemned by Islamic scholars. . . . the idea that there is a fundamental confict between There are many verses in the Qur’an that afrm the best values of Western civilization and the essen- the actuality and even the necessity of diversity in tial values of Islam. . . . ways of life and religious belief: [For example,] O Islamic civilization, which developed out of the mankind, truly We [God] have created you male and fe- revelation of the Qur’an in the seventh century, af- male, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may frms the truth of previous revelations, afrms reli- know one another. [Surah 49:13] . . . gious pluralism, cultural diversity, and human rights, In general, war is forbidden in Islam, except in and recognizes the value of reason and individual cases of self-defense in response to explicit aggres- conscience. . . . sion. If there is a situation where injustice is being [One issue] is the problem of violence. . . . Thou- perpetrated or if the community is being invaded, sands of Muslim institutions and leaders, the great then on a temporary basis permission is given to de- majority of the world’s billion or more Muslims, fend oneself. This principle is explained in the fol- have unequivocally condemned the hateful and vio- lowing verses: And fght in God’s cause against those lent ideologies that kill innocents and violate the who war against you, but do not commit aggression — for, dignity of all humanity. . . . verily, God does not love aggressors. [Surah 2:190] Islamic civilizations have a long history of en- [I]n recent decades . . . an intolerant ideology has couraging religious tolerance and guaranteeing the been unleashed. A small minority of the world’s one rights of religious minorities. The reason for this is and a half billion Muslims has misconstrued the that the Qur’an explicitly acknowledges that the di- teachings of Islam to justify their misguided and versity of religions is part of the Divine Plan and no immoral actions. It is most critical at this time for religion has a monopoly on truth or virtue. . . . Muslims to condemn such extreme ideologies and Jerusalem, under almost continuous Islamic rule their manifestations. It is equally important that non- for nearly fourteen centuries, has been a place where Muslims understand that this ideology violates the Christians and Jews have lived side by side with fundamental moral principles of Islam and is repug- Muslims, their holy sites and religious freedom pre- nant to the vast majority of Muslims in the world. . . . served. Medieval Spain also created a high level of So-called “suicide-bombers” did not appear until civilization as a multi-cultural society under Islamic the mid-1990s. Such strategies have no precedent in rule for several centuries. The Ottoman Empire, the Islamic history. The Qur’an says quite explicitly: Do longest lived in history, for the more than six cen- not kill yourselves. [4:29] . . . turies of its existence encouraged ethnic and reli- Muslims living in pluralistic societies have no re- gious minorities to participate in and contribute to ligious reasons to oppose the laws of their own socie- society. It was the Ottoman sultan who gave sanctu- ties as long as they are just, but rather are encouraged ary to the Jews expelled from Catholic Spain. India to uphold the duly constituted laws of their own was governed for centuries by Muslims, even while societies. . . . Islam and democracy are compatible the majority of its people practiced Hinduism. . . . and can coexist because Islam organizes humanity on the basis of the rule of law and human dignity. Source: Selections from Kabir Helminski, “Islam and The frst four successors to the Prophet Human Values,” unpublished pamphlet, 2009. Muhammad were chosen by the community through 1126 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present consultation, i.e., a representative democracy. The courage turning God into a political statement since only principle of political governance expressed in humans cannot possess God. . . .” the Qur’an is the principle of Consultation (Shura), [T]here is nothing in the Qur’an that essentially which holds that communities will “rule themselves by contradicts reason or science. . . . Repeatedly the means of mutual consultation.” [Surah 42:38] Qur’an urges human beings to “refect” and “use Following the principles of the Qur’an, Muslims their intelligence.” are encouraged to cooperate for the well-being of Islam is not an alien religion. It does not claim all. The Qur’an emphasizes three qualities above all a monopoly on virtue or truth. It follows in the others: peace, compassion, and mercy. The standard way of previous spiritual traditions that recognized greeting in Islam is “As-Salam alaykum (Peace be One Spirit operating within nature and human life. with you).” It continues on the Way of the great Prophets and An American Muslim scholar, Abdul Aziz Messengers of all sacred traditions. Sachedina, expresses it this way: “Islam does not en-

Document 22.4 Abandoning Islam

Far diferent from the experience of most Muslims has been the evolution of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali immigrant to the Netherlands and later to the United States, who repudiated much of her Somali culture and Islamic faith. Born in 1969, Hirsi Ali was the daughter of a prominent political opponent of the Somali government. Fleeing the country with her family, Hirsi Ali spent much of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, where she was attracted for a time to a strict form of Islam. As a teenager, she willingly wore a hijab, the traditional covering often prescribed for Muslim women. But in 1992, Hirsi Ali fed an arranged marriage to a man she regarded as a “bigot” and an “idiot” and found political asylum in the Netherlands. For this act of disobedience and rebellion, she was disowned by her father. In the Neth- erlands, Hirsi Ali fourished, moving from work as a cleaner to that of a translator in a refugee center and obtaining a master’s degree in the process. Her encounter with Western individualism and Enlightenment thought produced a growing disenchantment with Islam, and she came to see herself as an atheist. She also lived with a man for fve years, got involved in politics, was elected to the Dutch parliament, and participated in the making of a flm highly critical of Muslim treatment of women, for which she received numerous death threats. In 2006 she relocated to the United States, “in search of an opportunity to build a life and livelihood in freedom” as she put it. She has been working at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. By now a prominent public fgure both in Europe and North America, Hirsi Ali spelled out her remarkable — and very rare — personal transformation in a number of books, articles, and interviews. considering the evidence / documents: contending for islam 1127

■ What aspects of her own culture does Hirsi Ali explicitly reject? ■ What are the major points of confict between Islam and Western values in her view? ■ What criticisms of her views can you imagine? How might other Muslims respond to her? How might American advocates of multicul- tural tolerance react to her denunciation of Islam? ■ How would you assess her views of Western society? Do you fnd them accurate or romanticized?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali From Islam to America 2010

or a long time, I teetered between the clear ideals with their father’s choice of a mate, and after the Fof the Enlightenment that I learned about at uni- wedding their lives are devoted to the sexual plea- versity [in Holland] and my submission to the equally sure of their husbands and to a life of childbearing. clear dictates of Allah that I feared to disobey. Work- Their education is often cut short. . . . ing my way through university as a Dutch-Somali All Muslims are reared to believe that translator for the Dutch social services, I met many Muhammad, the founder of their religion, was per- Muslims in difcult circumstances, in homes for bat- fectly virtuous and that the moral strictures he left tered women, prisons, special education classes. . . . behind should never be questioned. The Quran, as I could not see the connection between their reli- “revealed” to Mohammad, is considered infallible . . . gion and the oppression of women and the lack of and all its commands must be obeyed without free individual choice. question. . . . It was, ironically, Osama bin Laden who freed Personally, I felt a sense of intense relief when me of those blinkers. After 9/11 I found it impos- I accepted the possibility that there is no life after sible to ignore his claims that the murderous destruc- death, no hell, no punishment, no burning, no sin. . . . tion of innocent (if infdel) lives is consistent with I too still sometimes feel this pain of separation from the Quran. I looked in the Quran and found it to my family and from the simplicity of Islam. . . . be so. To me this meant I could no longer be a The adults in my life (my mother and grand- Muslim . . . mother, other relatives and teachers) had systemati- I see three main problems to this process of in- cally rejected and punished inquisitive behavior as tegration [of Muslims into Western culture]. . . . The insolence toward authority. In Holland I was per- frst is Islam’s treatment of women. The will of little mitted to question authority and was entitled to an girls is stifed by Islam. By the time they menstruate, answer. . . . they are rendered voiceless. They are reared to be- I strongly believe that the Muslim mind can be come submissive robots, who serve in the house as opened. But when I have criticized the teachings of cleaners and cooks. They are required to comply the Quran, as Enlightenment thinkers once challenged the revealed truths of the Bible, I have been Source: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad: From Islam to America accused of blasphemy. Muhammad says my hus- (New York: Free Press, 2010), xii, xiii, xvi–xvii, 85, 86, band can beat me and that I am worth half as much 88–90, 207, 210, 214, 273–74. as a man. Is it I who am being disrespectful of 1128 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present

Muhammad in criticizing his legacy, or is it he who family, you clicked and pouted and sometimes sulked is disrespectful to me? for days. . . . From a Letter to My Grandmother: I do not wail for The secret of the Dutchman’s success is his ability your passing, but I am flled with a sense of guilt. I to adapt, to invent. . . . We bow to a God who says wish I too had been there for you. . . . When I was in we must not change a thing; it is he who has cho- pain . . . , you called in the help of your forefathers sen it. on my behalf. . . . [Y]ou took me to the witch doc- The infdel does not see life as a test, a passage to tor, who took your money and your sheep, and the hereafter, but as an end and a joy in itself. . . . He burned wounds in my chest with a long black- may take care of his parents, but has no use for a smith’s nail. . . . memory flled with an endless chain of ancestors. I am sorry Grandmother that I was not there in All the seeds of his toil are spent on his own of- your old age. . . . I would have summoned the spirits spring, not those of his brothers or uncles. of my new world. Here they have salves to cleanse Because the infdel trusts and studies new ideas, and sooth the itch in folded skin; they have hearing there is abundance in the infdel lands . . . the birth of aids; they have walking sticks on wheels. . . . a girl is just fne. . . . The little girl sits right next to I have lived with the infdels for almost two de- the little boy in school . . . she gets to eat as much as cades. I have come to learn, appreciate, and adopt he does . . . and when she matures, she gets the same their way of life. I know this would make you sad. . . . opportunity to seek and fnd a mate as he does. . . . Gone with you are the rigid rules of custom. . . . Grandmother, I no longer believe in the old Gone with you is that bloodline [clan or tribal loyal- ways. . . . I love you, and I love some of my memo- ties], for better or worse, and gone is the idiot tradi- ries of Somalia, though not all. But I will not serve tion that meant you cherished mares and she-camels the bloodline or Allah any longer. . . . I will even more than your daughters and granddaughters. . . . strive to persuade my fellow nomads to take on the When we heard news of the birth of a girl in the ways of the infdel. . . .

Using the Evidence: Contending for Islam 1. Understanding the uses of history: How does each of these authors use history to make his or her arguments? To what diferent historical contexts do they appeal? 2. Comparing Islamic modernists: How do you think Kemal Atatürk would respond to later Islamic modernists such as Sheikh Kabir? Consider also his reaction to Benazir Bhutto in Document 23.4, pp. 1178–79. 3. Imagining a conversation: What issue might arise in a conversation among the four authors represented here? Can you identify any areas of agreement? On which points would they probably never agree? 4. Explaining variations: What historical circumstances might help to account for the very diferent understandings of Islam that are refected in these documents? Visual Sources Considering the Evidence: Representing Independence

or millions of people in Africa and Asia, the achievement of political in- Fdependence from foreign domination marked a singular moment in their personal and collective histories. That moment represented a triumph against great odds and an awakening to the possibility of building new lives and new societies. As India’s Nehru put it, independence was a “tryst with destiny.” Both during the struggle and after, the various meanings attributed to independence found expression in a proliferation of poster art, as illustrated in the visual sources that follow. Such images served to inspire and mobilize large numbers of people for the tasks ahead, to articulate a vision of the future, and sometimes to celebrate success. Those grand hopes became a baseline from which future generations measured the realities of the post-independence period. The decades-long march to freedom in South Africa, led by the African National Congress (ANC), fnally achieved success in 1994 (see pp. 1100–02). Visual Source 22.1, an undated ANC poster, shows the organization’s fag and various symbols of its long struggle. The colors of the fag depict South Africa’s resources: black for the vast majority of its population, green for its rich land, and yellow for the gold that had long provided a basis for the country’s wealth. ■ Does the poster refect the ANC’s earlier, more peaceful and elite-based politics or its later, more aggressive posture? On what do you base your conclusion? ■ How might you understand the wheel, the fst, the spear, and the shield shown on the poster? Why do you think the poster used these traditional weapons rather than modern rifes? ■ Notice the mass march that provides the background to the poster’s primary images. What message does this convey? ■ Pay attention to the several red fags, representing the South African Communist Party, among the crowd. What posture toward communism is suggested by these fags? Keep in mind that the South African Commu- nist Party was a longtime ally of the ANC. ■ How might white, Indian, and mixed-race (“colored”) supporters of the ANC react to this poster? How might white advocates of apartheid respond to it? 1129 1130 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present

Visual Source 22.1 African National Congress (Special Collections, Senate House Library, University of London)

Following decades of opposition to French colonial rule and Japanese aggression, Vietnam found itself in a long struggle against American military intervention during the 1960s and 1970s. That struggle took shape as an efort by North Vietnam and communist supporters in the south to reunify their country and to drive out the American military forces, which numbered over a half million by the mid-1960s. By 1975, the North Vietnamese had succeeded. It was a stunning reversal for the American superpower and an equally stunning triumph for the small Southeast Asian country. While the reasons for this surprising turn of events have been debated ever since, it was clearly of enormous signifcance for Vietnamese understandings of their national independence. Visual Source 22.2 presents a Vietnamese poster, dating from somewhere between 1965 and 1975, that celebrates one aspect of that unlikely achievement. The caption reads: “Bravo for Hanoi’s Tremendous Victory When 23 B-52s Were Shot Down!” ■ How does this poster present the struggle against the United States? ■ In what way does it anticipate or celebrate the victory over the United States? What meaning does it attach to that victory? How might you considering the evidence / visual sources: representing independence 1131

Visual Source 22.2 Vietnamese Independence and Victory over the United States (Courtesy Track 16 / Smart Art Press, Culver City, California)

understand the fowers that the soldier is holding and the small pagoda in the upper left? ■ What other perspectives on this victory for national independence can you imagine? Consider various viewpoints within the United States as well as those of the anticommunist elements in Vietnamese society. The establishment of the independent state of Israel in 1948 marked an enormous victory for Jewish people that took on rich meaning for them in many contexts. The most historically signifcant context no doubt lay in the return of widely scattered Jewish people to the ancient biblical homeland from which so many Jews had fed or been expelled by various foreign rulers — Babylonian, Assyrian, Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader European. Since the frst century c.e., the majority of the world’s Jews had lived in diaspora in the Middle East, North Africa, or Europe, with smaller numbers retaining a Jewish presence in what was then called Palestine. For those whose families had long lived in exile, the opportunity to return to an authentically Jewish state in the area comprising the ancient Land of Israel must have seemed miraculous. 1132 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present

A more immediate context for the establishment of Israel was that of the Zionist movement, formally initiated in Europe in 1897 with the goal of creating a “home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” It was a response to the racism and anti-Semitism of European culture, and it drew on currents of nationalist thinking then surging across Europe. A major expression of Zionism lay in growing Jewish emigration to their ancient homeland, especially during the 1920s and 1930s and even more so in the several years following World War II and the Holocaust. Many among those who survived sought refuge and security in a land of their own. Two major obstacles confronted these Jewish emigrants. One was British control of Palestine, granted to Great Britain as a mandate of the League of Na- tions following World War I. While the British favored the eventual creation of a Jewish state, they also feared antagonizing their Arab allies by allowing un- fettered Jewish immigration. The second obstacle was opposition from the Arab majority of Palestine, who feared not only the loss of their land as Jewish settlers bought up growing amounts of it but also the loss of their cultural identity as Muslims in what they feared would become a Jewish land. The creation of Israel in 1948, with support from the United Nations, marked the triumph of Zionism and a victory over both British imperialism and Arab resistance. Visual Source 22.3 shows a Zionist poster created around 1940 and intended to encourage emigration to the Land of Israel and to persuade donors to contribute money for the purchase of land in Palestine. It was titled “Redeem the Land,” a reference to the Zionist goal of using up-to-date farming tech- niques to provide the agricultural basis for a modern society.16 ■ What features of the poster contributed to the Zionists’ message? ■ Why do you think the land is shown without any people? ■ How do you understand the contrast between the richly plowed land and the adjacent barren areas? What image of the new Israel does this poster project? ■ The fruits on the left side of the poster refect the biblical description of “promised land” as recorded in Deuteronomy 8:7–10.What is their func- tion in the poster? If the establishment of Israel as an independent state was a great triumph for Jewish nationalism, it was a disaster for Arabs in general and Palestinian Arabs in particular. In the decades that followed, Israel and various Arab states (Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, for example) went to war repeatedly. The so-called Six Day War of 1967 brought under Israeli control additional Palestinian land, including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, areas now known as the Palestinian Territories. At the same time, the Arabs of Palestine, both within Israel and in the adjacent territories, were developing a distinct national identity of their own. considering the evidence / visual sources: representing independence 1133

Visual Source 22.3 Winning a Jewish National State (The Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem) 1134 chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present

Many of them had lost their land and had lived for several generations as refugees in overcrowded camps in neighboring countries or territories where they were dependent on services provided by the United Nations. Almost all Palestinians felt oppressed, constrained, or discriminated against by Israeli authorities. Their emerging national identity found expression in the Palestin- ian Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964. Initially the PLO called for the complete liberation of Palestine from Zionist colonialism, but by the late 1980s the organization had implicitly recognized the right of Israel to exist and sought a “two-state solution” with an independent Palestine and Israel living side by side. Achieving even a limited Palestinian state, however, has proved extraordinarily difcult. In pursuit of their national goals, Palestinians have conducted raids, suicide bombing missions, and rocket attacks on Israel from camps in neighboring territories and on several occasions have organized large-scale violent resistance movements known as intifada. For its part, Israel has launched highly destructive large-scale military actions in the Palestinian territories, imposed economic blockades that have brought immense sufering to Palestinians, built walls and fences that have disrupted the normal movement of Palestinians, and continued to enlarge the Jewish settlements, especially in the West Bank. Both sides have presented their actions as largely defensive and reactive to the provocations of the other. They have also engaged in periodic negotiations with each other, but those eforts have thus far foundered on unbridgeable dif- ferences as to the size and nature of a future Palestinian state, the status of Jeru- salem, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their lands in Israel. Divisions among Palestinians have also hampered their movement, particularly the recent rivalry between the PLO and Hamas, an Islamic organization with both welfare and political/military functions. Like other peoples seeking an independent state, Palestinians have represented their struggles in posters such as Visual Source 22.4, created by the Pal- estinian artist Abdel Rahman Al Muzain in 1984. Featuring a Palestinian farmer, it was undertaken to commemorate Land Day, an annual observance of the occasion in 1976 when six Palestinians were killed in demonstrations against Israeli confscation of their land.17 ■ How might you read this poster as a response to the Israeli poster in Visual Source 22.3? ■ What signifcance would you attach to the posture and the traditional clothing of the farmer? Why do you think the artist depicted him with a pickax rather than a rife? ■ What message is conveyed by the rows of traditional houses on the hillside behind the farmer? ■ What expectations for the future does the poster imply? Consider the meaning of the doves between the feet and on the shoulder of the farmer as well as the sun’s swirling rays that seem to link the earth and sky. considering the evidence / visual sources: representing independence 1135

Visual Source 22.4 A Palestinian Nation in the Making (Palestine Poster Project/ Visual Connection Archive)

Using the Evidence: Representing Independence 1. Making comparisons: Movements of national independence can be defned by the conditions they were opposing as well as the kind of future they were seeking. With these two criteria in mind, what similarities and what diferences can you identify among these visual sources and the movements they represented? 2. Defning points of view: How would you identify the point of view that each of these visual sources conveys? Can you imagine a visual source with an alternative point of view for each of them? 3. Seeking meaning in visual sources: How do visual sources such as these help to illuminate the meaning of national independence? In what ways are they limited as sources of evidence for historians? 22-a chapter 22 / the end of empire: the global south on the global stage, 1914–present Chapter 22 Wrap Up

LearningCurve Check what you know. bedfordstmartins.com /strayer/LC STEP ONE

The Word to Know: Decolonization The Oxford English Dictionary defnes decolonization as “the withdrawal from its former colonies of a colonial power; the acquisition of political or economic independence by such colonies.” Review A Map of Time on page 1089, as well as Chapter 22. Then write a paragraph to explain how at least three of the events on the timeline relate to the process of global decolonization in the twentieth century.

STEP TWO

Mapping the End of Empires This exercise asks you to examine three of the maps from Chapter 22 and analyze in conjunction with evidence from the chapter’s narrative to better understand decolonization and the challenges that newly independent nations in the Global South faced. 1. Begin by examining Map 22.1, “The End of Empire in Africa and Asia” (p. 1090), then answer the questions below. a. Identify three similarities in decolonization and three unique events. b. Ask at least three good questions that the map raises. 2. Next examine Map 22.2, “The Partition of British South Asia” (p. 1097), and then identify three potentially problematic issues that arise with South Asian independence. 3. Finally, consider Map 22.3, “South Africa after Apartheid” (p. 1102), as well as the inset map, South Africa under Apartheid. a. Describe the map of South Africa under apartheid. b. Predict a challenge that might come from the redrawing of the map after the end of apartheid.

STEP THREE

Debating Development in Africa The African nations that gained independence from colonial rule from the 1950s through the 1970s faced a number of development challenges. Read the documents below and the relevant pages from Chapter 22 (pp. 1109–1112 in particular) and then answer the question that follows. chapter 22 / wrap up 22-b

1. Excerpt from A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism, 1987 A. Adu Boahen was a prominent historian and scholar in Ghana who acknowledged some posi- tive aspects of colonialism but who, on the whole, was negative in his assessment of the legacy of colonialism.

“It is this loss of sovereignty and the conse- of colonialism on Africa and one of the fun- quent isolation from the outside world that damental causes of its present underdevelop- one fnds one of the most pernicious impacts ment and technological backwardness.”

Source: A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 99

2. Excerpt from Mildred Malineo Tau, “Women: Critical to African Development,” 1981 Post-independence planning for African economic development focused almost exclusive on men. In 1981, Mildred Malineo Tau wrote an essay on the importance of women for Africa’s economic development.

“Recognition of the role of women in de- than one of equity. It goes beyond the ques- velopment is critical. . . . The issue of wom- tion of equal rights for women to become en’s access to wage work and other sources of one of economic survival for them and their cash income in the African continent is more children.”

Source: Mildred Malineo Tau, “Women: Critical To African Development,” Africa Report (March/April, 1981): 4–6.

3. Excerpt from George B.N. Ayittey, Africa Betrayed, 1992 George Ayittey is a prominent Ghanaian economist and scholar. His writings have focused on the internal problems that have hampered African development.

“It is easy for African leaders to put the blame [I]n Africa, government ofcials do not somewhere else . . . on Western aid donors serve the people. The African state has been or on an allegedly hostile international eco- reduced to a mafa-like bazaar, where any- nomic environment, . . . but in my view the one with an ofcial designation can pillage internal factors . . . have played far greater at will.” roles than the external ones . . .

Source: George B. N. Ayittey, Africa Betrayed (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 100, 335–36.

■ Question Now that you have read the documents and reviewed the textbook chapter, write an essay that answers the following question: What are the development challenges that African nations faced with decolonization? What were the reasons and some of the possible solutions for these challenges?